Aye, I should stress I've been enjoying it.. the actual story has been brilliant, can't wait for the next issues, seems all the bat titles are in for some fun.. but some of the art has been.. whoa.
there is a good website called "Mail Me My Comics" for subscriptions and such, a bit of a discount than buying them at a shop as well as being bagged and boarded if you like.
I have not tried them, but I thought about it. I can go to the store here though and just buy comics whenever I like.
They also charge you 40% more than cover price (allegedly for bags, boards, and shipping) on a six-issue subscription. Shop local my friend. Most comic shops I know will give you at least a 10% discount on cover if you have them pull a certain number of titles. And with comics doing not so hot, a lot of shops are willing to give you a box for less than 10 titles.
I don't see any reason why you should support a local comic store, at least barring some specific benefit they give you. I'm more than willing to be enlightened on the point, however.
Biggest trouble is knowing what you want, four months in
advance. Counting on a local shop to order something for you
that you found out about later is a little risky, especially if it's
stuff with smaller print runs.
I found this out the hard way by trying to catch up on the storyline
for Pigs, I ordered issue 5. Issue 5 was gone at the distributor.
KamikazeCanuck wrote:Plus support your local comic store and all that.
Sadly not all of us have one. My nearest is 45mins away, which is a nightmare for me to get to and they don't send out.
nomsheep wrote:This seems like a good place to ask this. Does anyone know any good sites online to buy comics? Or any comic shops. In Warwickshire/west Midlands uk?
Also do web comics count?
Nom
nom, Economic Comics is probably the best online retailer right now in the UK from when I looked into it a while back, they sell with discount if you preorder/sub and do a low rate shipping for your comics 1st or 2nd class, and they stock everything out there, they also have options to track varient covers if thats your thing. Oh and it all comes bagged and carded. Hell they let me buy some cards and bags when I asked as well. They let you pay via paypal as well which for me at least was handy, and if you decide you want a comic or comics asap rather than what for yur dispatch date, you can upgrade them for instant despatch by paying for it on your pull list and they get it out to you asap.
They are actually a big ebay seller as well, but I have forgotten the name. Been using them since DCNU launched, and they haven't let me down once so far.
I really want to get into comics but the closest thing I have to comic store nearby is in the next town over about 30 mins away and barely stocks anything.
I've just recently got back into comics. Picked up Mouse Guard: Black Axe #4, partially because I'm going to start running a Mouse Guard RPG soon. Also keeping up with the Adventure Time comic & Avatar: The Promise.
What are your thoughts on the new Aquaman? It will be released as TPB here. I thought I'd give it a try, a lot of you seem to be really excited about it. Not sure about Catwoman and Batgirl though.
I've really been enjoying Batgirl couldn't recommend it enough, and Catwoman has been wonderfully dark in places.
Ignoring the 'rooftop moment' a lot of folks across the interwebs couldn't get over, the comic has been a fun read as far as I'm concerned.
I feel the same. I'm a bit more radical about it -- namely, I find the scene to be perfect for the series. Too bad the title doesn't have the weight to outshine the hysteria. Then again, I doubt any one who would be reading it otherwise has stopped reading it.
Most recently, I have been buying up past issues of modern comics that have the remarkable Harley Quinn in them. Just bought and read the Countdown to Infinite Crisis comics she was in. Fantastic, but very strange and disjointed with all the flipping back and forth between various characters stories.
Marvel Germany is finally releasing Spider-Man TPBs again. It starts at the beginning of Brand New Day and even though that was the exact reason I stopped reading Spidey, I'm considering picking it up, because I really want more Peter Parker aas Spider-Man stories.
Has anyone seen the new Ultimate Spider-Man show yet? I'm not quite sure what to make of it. It has a few interesting ideas and characters, but the visual humor is so over the top and doesn't fit with Spidey at all. I'm really surprised how bad the first episodes were, considering all the talent involved. Paul Dini is writing, Bendis is producing and I the Ben 10 creators are working on it as well.
Anung Un Rama wrote:Marvel Germany is finally releasing Spider-Man TPBs again. It starts at the beginning of Brand New Day and even though that was the exact reason I stopped reading Spidey, I'm considering picking it up, because I really want more Peter Parker aas Spider-Man stories.
Has anyone seen the new Ultimate Spider-Man show yet? I'm not quite sure what to make of it. It has a few interesting ideas and characters, but the visual humor is so over the top and doesn't fit with Spidey at all. I'm really surprised how bad the first episodes where, considering all the talent involved. Paul Dini is writing, Bendis is producing and I the Ben 10 creators are working on it as well.
And in the cartoon he's undercover as principal an the school Peter Parker and his super friends go to. Which is a neat idea, but now they made him a comic relief character who's more worried about the school budget than the fact that the team is fighting Dr. Doom.
After waiting for over 7 weeks my last Amazon order arrived. Never again I'll order from #1 Value.
The first TPB from IDW's new Turtles series. And I really, really liked it.
It's another reboot, with Kevin Eastman as head writer. It has nice action scenes and some interesting twists on the origin story. If you like the TMNT, give it a shot.
I don't know much about Hank Pym outside of the Ultimate universe. Is Nathan Fillion really a good choice for the roll in Edgar Wright's Ant-Man movie? Because a lot of people seem to think so.
I finally got around to reading the first five issues of Swamp Thing last night and I was totally underwhelmed. Paquette is clearly very ambitious about the title and some of the images are quite memorable, like the snapped-neck rot zombies attacking with their faces flipped backwards or the cancer-ridden bully pressing his surprisingly ugly features against the plastic walls of William's sterile-enviro tent. But the cover framing and interpanel "organic" design, like art nouveau in the 70s, is just pretension. They're like doodles in the margins of notes for an especially dry lecture (not a misleading allusion to Snyder, by the way) and Paquette's mind sometimes seems to be on anything but visual narrative making some sequences of (ostensibly important) dialog confusing to follow. Indeed, artistic frustration seems apparent in Alec's perpetual balk and Abigail's omni-oppressive deadpan. The only character enjoying himself is trying to end it all. I'm probably reading too deeply, wondering if it's a coincidence.
Paquette may be a little off on this title but Snyder is the real let down. First, I'm sick of characters telling stories in place of the writer -- I'd prefer if the writer told the story using the characters. I just need to get this off my chest: Dear comic book writers, Please have something happen in the story. Sincerely, Manchu. Some might think I'm being a bit unfair to the first five issues of Swamp Thing. Plenty has happened. On the other hand, it's five issues of exposition -- for only three characters. And, not having read the older books, I still know hardly anything about any of them. The cosmological dichotomy of growth and decay Snyder either invents or carries on also seems facially problematic -- especially for the titular character. What better than a swamp to illustrate the close connection between these phenomena? I guess my expectations were pretty high. But it is Scott Snyder, after all, working on a modern-gothic tale of American horror.
I share your sentiments entirely: it's yet another failed Swamp Thing relaunch, just Brian Vaughan's and just like Andy Diggle's. I'll give it 20 issues or so before it folds. The revived Animal Man is faintly more promising, but still not a patch on Grant Morrison's run.
If you haven't read the Alan Moore Swamp Thing from the late '80s, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend buying them in TPB in place of this recycled tosh.
English Assassin wrote:If you haven't read the Alan Moore Swamp Thing from the late '80s, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend buying them in TPB in place of this recycled tosh.
I took your advice even before you proffered it. Last Thursday, I ordered the six volumes of Moore's run and read three volumes this past weekend. It's pitch perfect by comparison. But that "by comparison" part is the real cinch, isn't it? My take on Alan Moore is that he tries to write the complete, absolute, and final word on an issue. It's not that he's a tough act to follow, or it's not just that in any case -- it's that he sets things up so you have to follow in the sense of following his lead. I don't think Snyder wants to coast along the ruts cut by Moore but his wheels keep falling into those tracks anyway. One thing I've noticed about Moore's run is how little action there is (even an early appearance by the dynamically physical Etrigan is a breath of fresh air in Moore's stagnant, fetid swamp) which is a stark contrast to Snyder's Abigail, screaming up on a motorcycle and shoving a shotgun in Alec's face in one fluid motion. But the subsequent high-speed getaway, which is not even a chase, ends up petering out into our heroes simply ... going to sleep. And then they have their significant dreams. And then there's a creepy supernatural kid.
If the history of comics was itself a comic book, Alan Moore would be a super villain bent on world domination -- who won.
English Assassin wrote:If you haven't read the Alan Moore Swamp Thing from the late '80s, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend buying them in TPB in place of this recycled tosh.
I took your advice even before you proffered it. Last Thursday, I ordered the six volumes of Moore's run and read three volumes this past weekend.
Despite the redundancy of my advice, I'm very glad you're enjoying them. If you haven't read them before, you may find yourself wishing to pick up the first few volumes of Hellblazer (the Jamie Delano ones), which shed some more light on a few things (which I shan't spoil by mentioning before you read them). The Swamp Thing also makes a triumphant return at the end of Mike Carey's excellent Hellblazer run, which is itself well worth a read.
Manchu wrote:It's pitch perfect by comparison. But that "by comparison" part is the real cinch, isn't it? My take on Alan Moore is that he tries to write the complete, absolute, and final word on an issue. It's not that he's a tough act to follow, or it's not just that in any case -- it's that he sets things up so you have to follow in the sense of following his lead. I don't think Snyder wants to coast along the ruts cut by Moore but his wheels keep falling into those tracks anyway.
I think you strike the essential problem, which is that Moore's Swamp Thing is the definitive one - he has done pretty much everything worthwhile which can be done with a superhero made of moss, and there's simply no need, on a creative level, for more stories. On the entirely commercial level on which DC work, however, a franchise which once sold well is something to be mined until it's dry, then reinvented and mined some more, hence endless revamps to ever-diminishing returns, whether creative or commercial. Were it not for Neil Gaiman being rather better at reading contracts than Moore, I'm sure DC would have put Morpheus in the Justice League by now.
It's just a weird argument your making Manchu. "Moore is too definative." Most stories that are good are definitive. That old beginning, middle and end trick but we've been over this before.
English Assassin wrote:I think you strike the essential problem, which is that Moore's Swamp Thing is the definitive one - he has done pretty much everything worthwhile which can be done with a superhero made of moss, and there's simply no need, on a creative level, for more stories.
I very strongly object to this. This is Moore's line, especially with regard to the Watchmen right now. Alan Moore has no grounds to say there aren't more stories to tell about anything. A better way to put it is that there is no need for more Alan Moore stories. And so the current problem with Swamp Thing is that Snyder is too tonally similar to and/or too influenced by Moore.
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KamikazeCanuck wrote:Most stories that are good are definitive.
I couldn't disagree more. I think most good stories open up new ideas and dialogs and approaches -- they leave room for more stories. Alan Moore's career in mainstream comics was about foreclosing all the possibilities. Everything is the last story with him. Grant Morrison is a total contrast. With Grant, everything is the first story -- including his stuff for the likes of Batman and Superman, which have been in continuous publication for ~80 years.
Manchu wrote:If Morpheus could join the Justice League, I might be interested in buying and reading all those Sandman books.
It works the other way too; Justice League Dark is pretty much the final nail in John Constantine's coffin. (Not that Hellblazer hasn't been predominantly mediocre since Ennis' run.)
Manchu wrote:
English Assassin wrote:I think you strike the essential problem, which is that Moore's Swamp Thing is the definitive one - he has done pretty much everything worthwhile which can be done with a superhero made of moss, and there's simply no need, on a creative level, for more stories.
I very strongly object to this. This is Moore's line, especially with regard to the Watchmen right now. Alan Moore has no grounds to say there aren't more stories to tell about anything. A better way to put it is that there is no need for more Alan Moore stories. And so the current problem with Swamp Thing is that Snyder is too tonally similar to and/or too influenced by Moore.
Well, if Snyder succeeds in establishing his own style and doing something worthwhile and new with the the Swamp Thing, I will be genuinely delighted to eat my words (and to do so while buying the trades); the abject failure of all the series' many writers since Moore to do so, however, suggests that the odds are against him.
That's exactly my point: no one is going to out-Moore Moore. The puzzling thing is why everyone is trying so hard to do so. Yes, Alan Moore's work has made DC a lot of money. But the reason he made them so much money is because he was writing his way. (Grant Morrison does the same thing and, being a smart guy, is not only making a lot of money for DC but also a mint for his own self.) I don't know if DC chose Snyder for Swamp Thing or Snyder chose Swamp Thing and DC was willing to let him have what he wanted after Black Mirror and American Vampire. I doubt the pressure to do Swamp Thing like Moore is coming down from the editorial staff or management. It seems more likely to me that Alan Moore's lasting legacy is not on how executives view sales. I don't think that has changed much since Moore was signing whatever contract folks put in front of him. I'd say Moore's legacy, and I'm talking about since the late 80s, has been this overbearing artistic influence, what Harold Bloom calls the anxiety of influence.
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English Assassin wrote:It works the other way too; Justice League Dark is pretty much the final nail in John Constantine's coffin.
All I meant was, I finally picked up Moore's Swamp Thing run because Swamp Thing is once again relevant to the DC universe proper and I felt I might need some context to understand Snyder's run.
Manchu wrote:That's exactly my point: no one is going to out-Moore Moore. The puzzling thing is why everyone is trying so hard to do so. Yes, Alan Moore's work has made DC a lot of money. But the reason he made them so much money is because he was writing his way. (Grant Morrison does the same thing and, being a smart guy, is not only making a lot of money for DC but also a mint for his own self.) I don't know if DC chose Snyder for Swamp Thing or Snyder chose Swamp Thing and DC was willing to let him have what he wanted after Black Mirror and American Vampire. I doubt the pressure to do Swamp Thing like Moore is coming down from the editorial staff or management. It seems more likely to me that Alan Moore's lasting legacy is not on how executives view sales. I don't think that has changed much since Moore was signing whatever contract folks put in front of him. I'd say Moore's legacy, and I'm talking about since the late 80s, has been this overbearing artistic influence, what Harold Bloom calls the anxiety of influence.
Comic books must be a very difficult beast, commercially, since the fans always seem to want things to be new, and yet at the same to be different. I'd agree entirely that Moore's run was such a success because he reinvented the character (at a time when he had the freedom to do so, since nobody cared about Swamp Thing, and DC were about to pull the plug on the series - this applies to The Sandman and Animal Man too), and that the only likely way to duplicate that success will be to avoid duplicating anything else.
The only problem with that line of reasoning is that it does leave me wondering "why Swamp thing at all?". It's a great shame that, geekdom being the way it is, comic book companies are so unwilling ever to take the commercial gamble of allowing their writers create new properties. (Admittedly, the last time DC did this, it was a disaster, but it was back in the mid-1990s, and was done in an appallingly hamfisted way. We still got Garth Ennis' excellent Hitman out of it, however.) It's sad to reflect that comic books like Watchmen, V for Vendetta and The Invisibles, which have shaped the medium and brought it to a mainstream audience - which is to say people who wouldn't dream of buying books about guys in brightly-coloured spandex beating each other up in front of prominent landmarks - wouldn't have been published today.
Manchu wrote:
English Assassin wrote:It works the other way too; Justice League Dark is pretty much the final nail in John Constantine's coffin.
All I meant was, I finally picked up Moore's Swamp Thing run because Swamp Thing is once again relevant to the DC universe proper and I felt I might need some context to understand Snyder's run.
This, of course, is obviously a good thing, and I'm very glad you're enjoying them. If you haven't read them already, I suspect you would find the trades of Grant Morrison's Animal Man even more likeable. (Even though, in this instance, he really does make it difficult for subsequent writers to produce a more memorable treatment of the character.)
On another subject entirely, has anybody been picking up Elric: The Balance Lost, and if so, is it any good?
I'm all for new properties except at the expense of established ones. Even if brilliant creators are allowed to do a new character in her or his own title month after month, I doubt any of them will ever replace Batman as the one who always brings me back to this product.
This touches on the issue KC just brought up again: mythic cycles versus discrete narratives. I can get characters that only live in a single story from just about every medium out there: short stories, novels, film, TV programs, video games -- and yes comic books. But only the comic book has seemed to produce characters too big to be contained by their stories. I can enjoy something entirely self-contained like V for Vendetta as far as it goes, which honestly isn't too far. Far more enjoyable, for me at least, is the notion that Superman is more than can be apprehended by any of our egos, even one as disproportionately inflated as Alan Moore's.
All Alan Moore did was get people to like a property that no one cared about in the first place. It's not like he killed Superman. Speaking of which, Superman is not has never been a good title because it is by far the most stagnant and non-changing of all comics. It's best known and probably best selling arch was The Death of Superman. Was whoever wrote that just stoking his ego? Did it take a lot of courage to bring him back and reinstate the status quo?
The reason nothing can ever be permanently done with Batman and Spider-Man isn't because these characters have some kind of special timelessness. It's because they are corporate brands owned by publishers trying to sell comics every month and more importantly hoping they can cash in with some movie rights.
First of all, people won't buy it just because it's for sale. Second: although it might take a lesser or greater period to thoroughly investigate as the case may be, every individual imagination is a finite space. The second most arrogant thing creators can do is assume their audience will never tire of exploring one vision, their own. The most arrogant thing is to assume all other visions are ineffectual to the point of nonexistence (i.e., Alan Moore on comics since 1986). When you hear the story I'm telling, you're hearing your story as well as mine. The idea that I have should have a monopoly interest in the meaning that exists in your brain is utterly repulsive. "Your thoughts belong to me -- after all, you got them from me in the first place." Only after he tells you his scheme does Ozymandias reveal he's already accomplished it -- that is, your own imagination is presented to you as a fait accompli. Over and against this preposterous slavery stands Superman and there can be no question who is the greater.
Manchu wrote:First of all, people won't buy it just because it's for sale. Second: although it might take a lesser or greater period to thoroughly investigate as the case may be, every individual imagination is a finite space. The second most arrogant thing creators can do is assume their audience will never tire of exploring one vision, their own. The most arrogant thing is to assume all other visions are ineffectual to the point of nonexistence (i.e., Alan Moore on comics since 1986). When you hear the story I'm telling, you're hearing your story as well as mine. The idea that I have should have a monopoly interest in the meaning that exists in your brain is utterly repulsive. "Your thoughts belong to me -- after all, you got them from me in the first place." Only after he tells you his scheme does Ozymandias reveal he's already accomplished it -- that is, your own imagination is presented to you as a fait accompli. Over and against this preposterous slavery stands Superman and there can be no question who is the greater.
Manchu, what is this nonsense? Ozymandius is not Moore. I get that you do not like Alan Moore but your acting like he kicked your dog. You try to dress it up with overly cerebral criticisms but all you've said is that how dare he have the gall to write a definative story? A story that would be hard to follow? That sound like a sarcastic comment someone would say to be complimentey but you at being serious. Honestly, it's the strangest criticism I've ever heard. He is simply writing stories and you perceive arrogance in it. That's your problem. Are you criticizing the work or the reputation?
I'm not hiding a personal attack behind "overly cerebral" rhetoric. There's this thing called the Dark Age and it was pretty much ushered in by the Watchmen and the Dark Knight Returns. You say Alan Moore is "simply writing stories" but the fact is that those stories have been tremendously influential. Without Alan Moore, I doubt we'd have Rob Liefeld for example. It's not like his stories aren't good (or rather, it's not that they're indisputably bad) but they have shaped the industry and fan expectations in a way that is hard to overemphasize. (When Zack Snyder's movie came out, DC sold another million copies of the Watchmen.) And then there's the matter of how Moore himself perceives his work and his influence and he's none to shy about sharing. It's simply matter of paying attention.
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KamikazeCanuck wrote:Ozymandius is not Moore.
I am not saying that Ozymandias is Moore's one-for-one avatar. But is it far fetched to think a character in a story might actually be part of the author's self expression? And did you ever consider that the Watchmen is a story about comic book superheroes? I mean, that it tells us about superheroes as literary devices rather than just recounting the adventures of Nite Owl and the rest? Ozymandias is (part of) Moore's way of telling us what he thinks about this literary form. He stands for circumstances being beyond the capability of heroism, reluctant or otherwise -- that the reach of the superhero far exceeds his grasp, even when the hero in question is functionally omnipotent. It's no wonder that, in the wake of this story, Brian Azzarello could write Lex Luthor's core motivation as the belief that Superman's existence renders humanity meaningless ... a viewpoint that comes directly from Moore's recycling of an obscure Charleston character into Dr. Manhattan. Did you even realize that Ozymandias freaking superpower is storytelling? And it's the same with Rorschach, for whom death is preferable to giving up on "the truth." I'm not making this stuff up; it's right there on the page for anyone who bothers to pay attention.
Well Manchu if you had also been "paying attention" you'd know that Moore has said his intention was that Watchmen have 5 distinct outlooks from the 5 different main characters. Which it does. Many people identify with more or are more interested in different characters. I personally don't care anything for Ozymamdius, I find him to be the second least interesting character of the whole thing. I suspect he registered a lot more in your mind and you projected the writer on to him. Truly Moore suffers from multiple personality disorder if he is all the characters? Or perhaps creating fully realized yet diverse characters is a hallmark of a good writer.
Also while I honestly don't pay attention to what Moore says as much as you he has also lamented the influence Watchmen has had on the industry. While proud of his work he has said it is sad that 2 decades later it's still regarded as the best comic book. He has said it should have been surpassed a long time ago by something from the new generation.
KamikazeCanuck wrote:Well Manchu if you had also been "paying attention" you'd know that Moore has said his intention was that Watchmen have 5 distinct outlooks from the 5 different main characters. [...] Truly Moore suffers from multiple personality disorder if he is all the characters?
Really? You're telling me to pay attention? Really? Let's look back one post.
Manchu wrote:I am not saying that Ozymandias is Moore's one-for-one avatar. But is it far fetched to think a character in a story might actually be part of the author's self expression?
KamikazeCanuck wrote:While proud of his work he has said it is sad that 2 decades later it's still regarded as the best comic book. He has said it should have been surpassed a long time ago by something from the new generation.
My God, this is exactly what I've been talking about: Moore declares he's the only one who matters and people line up to nod. For feth's sake, Moore's Dark Age was undermined as early as 1996 by Mark Waid and Alex Ross in Kingdom Come.
You yourself are saying that his peers are influenced him. Creating an entire "dark age". That's a pretty big accomplishment. Why is it Moore's fault that a subsequent generation was influenced by him? That's why when he said there's no need for these Watchmen prequels I just see it as an extension of what he said years ago. That Watchmen shouldn't be held up like this and other writers should have stepped out of his shadow. How are the supposed to do that when they are borrowing from him again? He's rather have them creating great original works of their own but your negative predisposition towards him makes you think he is bragging. He doesn't need to apologized for being critically reclaimed.
You previously said Moore can show comics can be taken seriously now let's see what else they can do. What does that even mean? Not being taken seriously willl happen all on it's own, you don't need to work at it. Being taken seriously is hard though. I know you don't like Christopher Nolan's Batman. I don't know your opinion on Tim Burton's but I find them similar in their darkness. I prefer Batman that way. For many out there, not joking, Adam West is the ultimate Batman. That Batman is the pinnicle of all Batman can be. Neither preference is wrong. It that goes both ways. Some, like me, prefer a grittier comic book world.
If this "dark age" was "killed" then it was killed by the "bad girls" phenomenon. An entire age driven by giant boobs. I'll take Moore's pretentious-to-some deconstruction of the graphic novel medium over super-big-and-shiny boobs comics any day. That is what else comics can do.
Some of the things you're saying, I'm in 100% agreement with. But I think we're drawing different lessons from shared concepts or at least talking past each other a little.
The "bad girls" are very much of the Dark Age. And Nolan's Batman is the most unambiguously Dark Age interpretation of the character since the Dark Knight Returns -- not surprising since it draws explicitly from Frank Miller as well as The Killing Joke. Burton's Batman was also a product of the Dark Age but those movies look a lot more like the Silver Age next to Nolan.
That's a good example actually. Unlike with previous eras, there's a real ambiguity to when the Dark Age ended or whether it ever did. You can see that with Nolan. Going on chronology alone, Burton's work (which I love FYI) should be far, far darker than Nolans. Think about it: The Dark Knight Returns was published in 1986; TKJ in 1988; and Burton's Batman film was released in 1989. And yet the phenomenal success of Nolan's films shows us a real retrenchment of that style in a much harder cast. Same with animation: Batman The Animated Series was shockingly dark in the 90s but Young Justice (a show about kids!) makes TAS seem "cartoonish."
One of the lessons we can draw is that the system of labeling eras is only good to a point. Hell, the serials from the 40s are pretty damn dark compared to the camp sensibility of the Adam West show. In fact, the story goes that the 60s program was a parody on the seriousness of the serials. Bob Kane's Batman from '39 is really dark, too. And so are the O'Neil/Adams stories immediately following the zany high Silver Age.
So I'm not here to say the Dark Age was gak. Yeah, there was Liefeld. And the pouches and the boobs. And yeah I hate a lot of things about TKJ and Year One and TDKR -- especially in terms of how oppressive their influence is. But I love Neal Adams. And I can't deny that Frank Miller and Alan Moore were major watersheds. That's why they're influential.
Let's just think about Shakespeare as an example. I know his plays are great. But what if Shakespeare's greatness meant we'd never have another play because the good plays had already been written -- and Shakespeare himself was holed up in Avon telling us that no one has ever managed to write a play of any worth. At that point the influence of Shakespeare becomes toxic rather than stimulating. That's the kind of taint that Moore's work and Moore's influence have spread. And it's my contention that this isn't a coincidence. There have been a lot of great comics writers but the great majority of them have inspired others (including Moore) to push things in different directions whereas the Watchmen just gets played again and again (look up Moore's Twilight of the Superheroes if you want to know what his plans were regarding this -- basically a rewrite of the Watchmen with DC characters).
I don't really object to Moore's deconstruction. I object to Moore's apparent contention that deconstruction is the end of all things. Kingdom Come introduced us to reconstruction and Grant Morrison has developed that into a high art. Batman RIP surpasses the Watchmen as much as the Watchmen surpassed the Silver Age -- and unsurprisingly Batman RIP is the great rehabilitation of the zaniest episodes of the Silver Age. Troublingly for some, Morrison's writing is not totalitizing; it's much harder to read and doesn't twist the reader's arm into adopting its viewpoint. A lot of people just gave up on it as entirely inaccessible -- no Rorshach to push you around. (Take a look at some of the articles reds8n has posted here about Morrison's books.)
KamikazeCanuck wrote:All Alan Moore did was get people to like a property that no one cared about in the first place. It's not like he killed Superman.
Speaking of which, Superman is not has never been a good title because it is by far the most stagnant and non-changing of all comics. It's best known and probably best selling arch was The Death of Superman.
I'm sorry that's nonsense.
Back in the day Superman used to sell over 1 million copies a month, over multiple titles.
And of course when he first appeared he could "merely" leap tall buildings, outrace a locomotive etc etc. All the other stuff -- flying, heat visions, time travel " super ventriloquism", the fortress of Solitude, Superboy, the Legion of Super Heroes etc etc all came along much later.
For what... 10 years plus..... Clark and Lois were actually married.
Was whoever wrote that just stoking his ego?
Only a little bit. The original plan was to have the marriage but that was verboten due to the success of the Lois and Clark Tv show.
Did it take a lot of courage to bring him back and reinstate the status quo?
I don't think there was ever any doubt he would return, the trick is if you can pull it off successfully. Given the sales boost and the new characters that spun out of the story and are noew pretty much part of the mythos -- see Steel/John henry Irons being intro'ed early in the current Action Comics run I think they were successful.
The reason nothing can ever be permanently done with Batman and Spider-Man isn't because these characters have some kind of special timelessness. It's because they are corporate brands owned by publishers trying to sell comics every month and more importantly hoping they can cash in with some movie rights.
I think you're partially correct here, $/£s talk after all. See the return to the "more iconic" versions of several of the DC characters.
That said one would point out what was happening in the Batman comics in the last few years goes pretty much directly against this yes ? Biggest and best selling Batman films ever and the comics had Dick Grayson -- who isn't even mentioned in the films -- running round as Batman with Bruce's bastard son as Robin
With regards to Moore.... hmm...
I love some of what he's done. His Swamp Thing run I've owned -- in the B & W reprint trades -- for years and love it to bits. But I think the best bits is when he sues the other DC characters and toys as well. I've been to talks he's done about magick, drugs and all manner of leftfield topics, and he's great to listen to.
But I think there's times he talks out of his arse, especially when it comes to legacy and creativity in comics. I don't recall him moaning and bitching about everything being the same and there being nothing new when he was jobbing for Image comics writing X men sorry WILDCATS, Superman Supreme or any other of the crude copies and ripoffs he's worked on over the years.
Fair play to him I think he sort of acknowledges this in a Splash Branigan short.
Frankly he's now coming across as a moany old man droning on about how everything was better in the old days. I respect the stand he's taken but moaning after one has burnt one's own boats or bridges is churlish in the extreme. I was actually quite amused to read how he's so against Watchmen prequels as everything that needed to be said has been said.... and then going onto complain about how DC have stitched him over over the contract -- a contract that ahs paid him good royalties for many years now -- as if they hadn't kept the book in print then the rights would revert to him/the creators.
... ..now... why do you think they'd be interested in those then eh ? Or is it actually a case of there's nothing more I want anyone else to say with the characters ?
There's things of Moore's I'd still be very interested in seeing -- I can't be the only person here who's read the online stuff about his DC Twilight of the Gods/ proto Kingdom Come which sounds immense... but I'm less and less interested in hearing what he has to say. I thought much of his comments about the recent Dc events concerning Green lantern were especially dumb and spiteful, and laughable when you look how he's used existing/obscure bits of continuity in his own work.
Manchu wrote:But only the comic book has seemed to produce characters too big to be contained by their stories.
Now that's a very nicely-put way of looking at it, and I'd agree that talented writers are capable of conveying this is their work - Grant Morrison is indeed the exemplar of this.
KamikazeCanuck wrote:The reason nothing can ever be permanently done with Batman and Spider-Man isn't because these characters have some kind of special timelessness. It's because they are corporate brands owned by publishers trying to sell comics every month and more importantly hoping they can cash in with some movie rights.
It's difficult to argue, however, that this is not also true.
KamikazeCanuck wrote:All Alan Moore did was get people to like a property that no one cared about in the first place.
It's quite possible to read that sentence as "Alan Moore got people who didn't read comics to read comics.", which would also be true.
KamikazeCanuck wrote:It's not like he killed Superman. Speaking of which, Superman is not has never been a good title because it is by far the most stagnant and non-changing of all comics. It's best known and probably best selling arch was The Death of Superman. Was whoever wrote that just stoking his ego? Did it take a lot of courage to bring him back and reinstate the status quo?
I'm actually unsure as to whether you're being sarcastic here, particularly since Moore did kill Superman in Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow. The Death of Superman sold a colossal number of comics in a time in which sales volumes were many times their present level - indeed it, along with the multiple-cover, polybagged X-Men v2#1, is often blamed for the crash which ended that boom.
Looked at twenty years on, however, time has not done it any favours (even if one ignores Superman's mullet), and it compares, as a Superman story, very poorly with, say, Kingdom Come, Peace on Earth or the recent Infinite/Final Crisis stories. The dialogue is stilted (written by the Marvel method), the art is scratchy, and everybody knows (as they did at the time) that the ending will be a cop-out. It's no coincidence that collections of material published around the same time, but written with a measure of integrity, rather than as publicity gimmicks, have continued to sell over the intervening twenty years (Sandman, Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, by way of example, all of which continue to appear in the lower reaches of the IGN charts, and have done so consistently since publication).
Manchu wrote:There's this thing called the Dark Age and it was pretty much ushered in by the Watchmen and the Dark Knight Returns. You say Alan Moore is "simply writing stories" but the fact is that those stories have been tremendously influential. Without Alan Moore, I doubt we'd have Rob Liefeld for example.
Whilst I see the logic, it's perhaps a little unfair to blame Alan Moore (though I might indeed point a finger at Frank Miller) for Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane, et al. having taken the superficial "darkness" of their work, and pasted it onto low-quality superhero hackwork. That's like blaming Jane Austen for Bridget Jones' Diary, or Umberto Eco for The Da Vinci Code. 1963, Tom Strong and (perhaps most remarkably) Moore's well-regarded reinvention of Leifeld's otherwise execrable Supreme, demonstrate that his oeuvre is not limited to grit and gloom.
Manchu wrote:Batman RIP surpasses the Watchmen as much as the Watchmen surpassed the Silver Age -- and unsurprisingly Batman RIP is the great rehabilitation of the zaniest episodes of the Silver Age. Troublingly for some, Morrison's writing is not totalitizing; it's much harder to read and doesn't twist the reader's arm into adopting its viewpoint. A lot of people just gave up on it as entirely inaccessible -- no Rorshach to push you around.
Now I would take issue with this. Firstly, Banman RIP, though infinitely better-written than The Death of Superman, is still fuss about nothing; a year on, Bruce is back in his Batcave as though nothing had happened. Secondly, though we'll need to wait twenty years to judge it fairly, I don't imagine that, for all its good points, it will have become, as Watchmen has, a cultural reference point accessible to those outside geekdom.
@EnglishAssassin: Are you thinking of Final Crisis? Batman didn't actually die in Batman RIP. Also, whether or not the events of a story are rendered "permanent" by subsequent writers doesn't seem to me to be the only criterion of success.
It's hard for me to understand this "loved outside of comic books" criterion of success, too. What does it matter if people who are ignorant of a genre can reference a couple of best sellers? Where is this hip intelligentsia who read the Watchmen but couldn't tell (or care less about) who Nightwing is? And why should I care what they think? It seems to me that "the wider audience" is the movie-going and TV-watching public. Their approval is registered in dollars. These are the same people who have handed over millions to Kim Kardashian. I guess by that standard Kim is far more culturally significant than Alan Moore.
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English Assassin wrote:Whilst I see the logic, it's perhaps a little unfair to blame Alan Moore (though I might indeed point a finger at Frank Miller) for Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane, et al. having taken the superficial "darkness" of their work, and pasted it onto low-quality superhero hackwork.
Let's not push the argument too far. It's not like Rob Liefeld is Alan Moore's protege. But Moore and Miller did set the stage for guys like Liefeld and McFarlane to look down at their bristol board and see something serious rather than ridiculous. And, more importantly, Moore and Miller created an appetite for darkness among the fans.
TBH, I don't have any interest in running down the 90s. That's when I was head over heals for anything with an X (or "2099") in the title and didn't give a crap about whatever was going on with DC if it wasn't Batman. (I never even bought the Death of Superman black cover.) I liked Cable then and, although I have no idea what is going on with the character now, liking him doesn't embarrass me. While Lady Death and Witchblade didn't do it for me, I definitely thought Domino and Psylocke were incredibly hot. The AzBats costume, a parody of what Liefeld did for Marvel, was for me the epitome of cool. Spawn was a close second and I'd still laud Angela and Redeemer as visually as well as narratively provocative.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also, would one of your kind Britishers do a Yank a good turn by flipping through this and tell me about it:
Manchu wrote:Some of the things you're saying, I'm in 100% agreement with. But I think we're drawing different lessons from shared concepts or at least talking past each other a little.
The "bad girls" are very much of the Dark Age. And Nolan's Batman is the most unambiguously Dark Age interpretation of the character since the Dark Knight Returns -- not surprising since it draws explicitly from Frank Miller as well as The Killing Joke. Burton's Batman was also a product of the Dark Age but those movies look a lot more like the Silver Age next to Nolan.
That's a good example actually. Unlike with previous eras, there's a real ambiguity to when the Dark Age ended or whether it ever did. You can see that with Nolan. Going on chronology alone, Burton's work (which I love FYI) should be far, far darker than Nolans. Think about it: The Dark Knight Returns was published in 1986; TKJ in 1988; and Burton's Batman film was released in 1989. And yet the phenomenal success of Nolan's films shows us a real retrenchment of that style in a much harder cast. Same with animation: Batman The Animated Series was shockingly dark in the 90s but Young Justice (a show about kids!) makes TAS seem "cartoonish."
One of the lessons we can draw is that the system of labeling eras is only good to a point. Hell, the serials from the 40s are pretty damn dark compared to the camp sensibility of the Adam West show. In fact, the story goes that the 60s program was a parody on the seriousness of the serials. Bob Kane's Batman from '39 is really dark, too. And so are the O'Neil/Adams stories immediately following the zany high Silver Age.
So I'm not here to say the Dark Age was gak. Yeah, there was Liefeld. And the pouches and the boobs. And yeah I hate a lot of things about TKJ and Year One and TDKR -- especially in terms of how oppressive their influence is. But I love Neal Adams. And I can't deny that Frank Miller and Alan Moore were major watersheds. That's why they're influential.
Let's just think about Shakespeare as an example. I know his plays are great. But what if Shakespeare's greatness meant we'd never have another play because the good plays had already been written -- and Shakespeare himself was holed up in Avon telling us that no one has ever managed to write a play of any worth. At that point the influence of Shakespeare becomes toxic rather than stimulating. That's the kind of taint that Moore's work and Moore's influence have spread. And it's my contention that this isn't a coincidence. There have been a lot of great comics writers but the great majority of them have inspired others (including Moore) to push things in different directions whereas the Watchmen just gets played again and again (look up Moore's Twilight of the Superheroes if you want to know what his plans were regarding this -- basically a rewrite of the Watchmen with DC characters).
I don't really object to Moore's deconstruction. I object to Moore's apparent contention that deconstruction is the end of all things. Kingdom Come introduced us to reconstruction and Grant Morrison has developed that into a high art. Batman RIP surpasses the Watchmen as much as the Watchmen surpassed the Silver Age -- and unsurprisingly Batman RIP is the great rehabilitation of the zaniest episodes of the Silver Age. Troublingly for some, Morrison's writing is not totalitizing; it's much harder to read and doesn't twist the reader's arm into adopting its viewpoint. A lot of people just gave up on it as entirely inaccessible -- no Rorshach to push you around. (Take a look at some of the articles reds8n has posted here about Morrison's books.)
You're going to have to define what the "Dark Age" is then. From your original description it sounds like when comics became more mature. The Bad Girls age as far as I'm concerned actually undid that or at least slowed it a bit. Unless Dark age is meant more like "when comics suck". For me The Watchmen and Witchblade are moving in opposite directions and the only reason to say one owes something to the other is because it simply came after it chronologically.
Are we in the Dark Age now? I guess we must be but It could be argued it was just an evolution of the medium in the first place.
Overall I get this sense from your points that you'd think that comics would be better if The Watchmen and Moore never existed. I don't know if that's what you think, but I don't agree and I also don't think he's even remotely as toxic as some of their creators to come after him in the Image revolution.
KamikazeCanuck wrote:All Alan Moore did was get people to like a property that no one cared about in the first place. It's not like he killed Superman.
Speaking of which, Superman is not has never been a good title because it is by far the most stagnant and non-changing of all comics. It's best known and probably best selling arch was The Death of Superman.
I'm sorry that's nonsense.
Back in the day Superman used to sell over 1 million copies a month, over multiple titles.
And of course when he first appeared he could "merely" leap tall buildings, outrace a locomotive etc etc. All the other stuff -- flying, heat visions, time travel " super ventriloquism", the fortress of Solitude, Superboy, the Legion of Super Heroes etc etc all came along much later.
For what... 10 years plus..... Clark and Lois were actually married.
Was whoever wrote that just stoking his ego?
Only a little bit. The original plan was to have the marriage but that was verboten due to the success of the Lois and Clark Tv show.
Did it take a lot of courage to bring him back and reinstate the status quo?
I don't think there was ever any doubt he would return, the trick is if you can pull it off successfully. Given the sales boost and the new characters that spun out of the story and are noew pretty much part of the mythos -- see Steel/John henry Irons being intro'ed early in the current Action Comics run I think they were successful.
The reason nothing can ever be permanently done with Batman and Spider-Man isn't because these characters have some kind of special timelessness. It's because they are corporate brands owned by publishers trying to sell comics every month and more importantly hoping they can cash in with some movie rights.
I think you're partially correct here, $/£s talk after all. See the return to the "more iconic" versions of several of the DC characters.
That said one would point out what was happening in the Batman comics in the last few years goes pretty much directly against this yes ? Biggest and best selling Batman films ever and the comics had Dick Grayson -- who isn't even mentioned in the films -- running round as Batman with Bruce's bastard son as Robin
With regards to Moore.... hmm...
I love some of what he's done. His Swamp Thing run I've owned -- in the B & W reprint trades -- for years and love it to bits. But I think the best bits is when he sues the other DC characters and toys as well. I've been to talks he's done about magick, drugs and all manner of leftfield topics, and he's great to listen to.
But I think there's times he talks out of his arse, especially when it comes to legacy and creativity in comics. I don't recall him moaning and bitching about everything being the same and there being nothing new when he was jobbing for Image comics writing X men sorry WILDCATS, Superman Supreme or any other of the crude copies and ripoffs he's worked on over the years.
Fair play to him I think he sort of acknowledges this in a Splash Branigan short.
Frankly he's now coming across as a moany old man droning on about how everything was better in the old days. I respect the stand he's taken but moaning after one has burnt one's own boats or bridges is churlish in the extreme. I was actually quite amused to read how he's so against Watchmen prequels as everything that needed to be said has been said.... and then going onto complain about how DC have stitched him over over the contract -- a contract that ahs paid him good royalties for many years now -- as if they hadn't kept the book in print then the rights would revert to him/the creators.
... ..now... why do you think they'd be interested in those then eh ? Or is it actually a case of there's nothing more I want anyone else to say with the characters ?
There's things of Moore's I'd still be very interested in seeing -- I can't be the only person here who's read the online stuff about his DC Twilight of the Gods/ proto Kingdom Come which sounds immense... but I'm less and less interested in hearing what he has to say. I thought much of his comments about the recent Dc events concerning Green lantern were especially dumb and spiteful, and laughable when you look how he's used existing/obscure bits of continuity in his own work.
I's still say getting married to the only girl he's ever been involved with and power fluctuations (which have more to do with how difficult it is to write a guy who's all-powerful like Superman rather than plot developement) isn't much for 80 years. Superman is often trapped from development from his own iconicness. Anyways these are simply personal preferences anyway and all we can do is explain why we view things in that way; no one is wrong.
Yes, Moore is a crazy old man but usually crazy and weird people make good artists: writers and musicians.
I'm not saying he's the comic book messiah or anything, in fact I've read very little of his stuff but what I have read I've liked. Liked a hell of a lot more than the usual stuff I find in my pull box.
Manchu wrote:@EnglishAssassin: Are you thinking of Final Crisis? Batman didn't actually die in Batman RIP. Also, whether or not the events of a story are rendered "permanent" by subsequent writers doesn't seem to me to be the only criterion of success.
As you have inferred, I was thinking of the whole drawn-out saga of Bat-death (or rather Bat-non-death) which began in Batman RIP.
Manchu wrote:It's hard for me to understand this "loved outside of comic books" criterion of success, too. What does it matter if people who are ignorant of a genre can reference a couple of best sellers? Where is this hip intelligentsia who read the Watchmen but couldn't tell (or care less about) who Nightwing is? And why should I care what they think? It seems to me that "the wider audience" is the movie-going and TV-watching public. Their approval is registered in dollars. These are the same people who have handed over millions to Kim Kardashian. I guess by that standard Kim is far more culturally significant than Alan Moore.
Strictly what I meant here was literary success; the approval of those who (like me) have no idea who Kim Kardashian is. It is telling that Moore and Gaiman have both achieved the nigh-unique feat of winning literary awards (still genre awards, but it's a nonetheless a significant step) for their comic books (a Hugo for Watchmen, a Nebula for Sandman). Both contribute to the Guardian and to the TLS, and that's where you'll find the readership who know Watchmen, but not X-Men.
Manchu wrote:
English Assassin wrote:Whilst I see the logic, it's perhaps a little unfair to blame Alan Moore (though I might indeed point a finger at Frank Miller) for Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane, et al. having taken the superficial "darkness" of their work, and pasted it onto low-quality superhero hackwork.
Let's not push the argument too far. It's not like Rob Liefeld is Alan Moore's protege. But Moore and Miller did set the stage for guys like Liefeld and McFarlane to look down at their bristol board and see something serious rather than ridiculous. And, more importantly, Moore and Miller created an appetite for darkness among the fans.
Were we discussing Frank Miller, whose 1980s Daredevil and Batman runs are indeed prototypes of 1990s "grim and gritty", I'd say you had a point, but Alan Moore's lasting legacy in comic books (aside from leading the drift towards writers actually scripting, rather than just tacking dialogue on to pencilled panels) lies in 1990s series like Transmetropolitan and The Invisibles (or indeed most things published by Vertigo). I really don't see how, say, Spawn or Cable owe anything to Moore beyond a nebulous (and very superficial) "darkness". They certainly share none of Moore's literary influences (J.G. Ballard, William Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon), and it's unsurprising that they have enjoyed none of his literary recognition.
Manchu wrote:Also, would one of your kind Britishers do a Yank a good turn by flipping through this and tell me about it.
I'll be seeing my friend Jamie in the pub later, he'll doubtless have bought it.
English Assassin wrote:
The Death of Superman sold a colossal number of comics in a time in which sales volumes were many times their present level - indeed it, along with the multiple-cover, polybagged X-Men v2#1, is often blamed for the crash which ended that boom.
Looked at twenty years on, however, time has not done it any favours (even if one ignores Superman's mullet), and it compares, as a Superman story, very poorly with, say, Kingdom Come, Peace on Earth or the recent Infinite/Final Crisis stories. The dialogue is stilted (written by the Marvel method), the art is scratchy, and everybody knows (as they did at the time) that the ending will be a cop-out. It's no coincidence that collections of material published around the same time, but written with a measure of integrity, rather than as publicity gimmicks, have continued to sell over the intervening twenty years (Sandman, Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, by way of example, all of which continue to appear in the lower reaches of the IGN charts, and have done so consistently since publication).
Manchu wrote:There's this thing called the Dark Age and it was pretty much ushered in by the Watchmen and the Dark Knight Returns. You say Alan Moore is "simply writing stories" but the fact is that those stories have been tremendously influential. Without Alan Moore, I doubt we'd have Rob Liefeld for example.
Whilst I see the logic, it's perhaps a little unfair to blame Alan Moore (though I might indeed point a finger at Frank Miller) for Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane, et al. having taken the superficial "darkness" of their work, and pasted it onto low-quality superhero hackwork. That's like blaming Jane Austen for Bridget Jones' Diary, or Umberto Eco for The Da Vinci Code. 1963, Tom Strong and (perhaps most remarkably) Moore's well-regarded reinvention of Leifeld's otherwise execrable Supreme, demonstrate that his oeuvre is not limited to grit and gloom.
I don't think I'd pin the crash on The Death of Superman or even X-Men #1. X-Men #1 may have been the beginning of the end but we can only blame the actual end of the end: Image's never-ending variant cover extravaganza as the culprit.
Couldn't agree more about Liefeld. It's massively unfair to blame The Liefeld on Alan Moore!
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Manchu wrote:
It's hard for me to understand this "loved outside of comic books" criterion of success, too. What does it matter if people who are ignorant of a genre can reference a couple of best sellers? Where is this hip intelligentsia who read the Watchmen but couldn't tell (or care less about) who Nightwing is? And why should I care what they think? It seems to me that "the wider audience" is the movie-going and TV-watching public. Their approval is registered in dollars. These are the same people who have handed over millions to Kim Kardashian. I guess by that standard Kim is far more culturally significant than Alan Moore.
I've see you throw up this geek wall before Manchu. It's not that being acceptable to those who don't read comics is some criterion of success but it's not some shame either. Like you've lost your nerd-cred. It just so happens that comics that are accessible and self contained can be good. I read a lot of comics every month and I'm now picking some Batman and even I find it a bit inaccessible.
It's not right to say "those people" are the ones that watch Kim Kardasian so feth 'em. Comic books can be insular and confusing and sometime the ones that aren't are better.
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English Assassin wrote:
Manchu wrote:
English Assassin wrote:Whilst I see the logic, it's perhaps a little unfair to blame Alan Moore (though I might indeed point a finger at Frank Miller) for Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane, et al. having taken the superficial "darkness" of their work, and pasted it onto low-quality superhero hackwork.
Let's not push the argument too far. It's not like Rob Liefeld is Alan Moore's protege. But Moore and Miller did set the stage for guys like Liefeld and McFarlane to look down at their bristol board and see something serious rather than ridiculous. And, more importantly, Moore and Miller created an appetite for darkness among the fans.
Were we discussing Frank Miller, whose 1980s Daredevil and Batman runs are indeed prototypes of 1990s "grim and gritty", I'd say you had a point, but Alan Moore's lasting legacy in comic books (aside from leading the drift towards writers actually scripting, rather than just tacking dialogue on to pencilled panels) lies in 1990s series like Transmetropolitan and The Invisibles (or indeed most things published by Vertigo). I really don't see how, say, Spawn or Cable owe anything to Moore beyond a nebulous (and very superficial) "darkness". They certainly share none of Moore's literary influences (J.G. Ballard, William Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon), and it's unsurprising that they have enjoyed none of his literary recognition.
I agree, and even if we are to blame Moore for all "darkness" then we must give him creit for all the good stuff that came out of it too.
I think we're actually selling short MacFarlane's influence on comics. Spawn was actually another watershed moment for the industry too. I actually think that's when comics became their darkest. It is however not stood the test of time as well as Watchmen which I think is another compliment to Moore.
I don't want to interrupt your discussion, but there is something I have to get of my chest:
The Ultimate Spider-Man Cartoon still sucks. A lot. First they ruined Coulson. Then they made Venom boring. And now I couldn't even enjoy an episode with Iron Man in it. Gork damnit, how can a creative team like this fail so hard?
Anung Un Rama wrote:I don't want to interrupt your discussion, but there is something I have to get of my chest:
The Ultimate Spider-Man Cartoon still sucks. A lot. First they ruined Coulson. Then they made Venom boring. And now I couldn't even enjoy an episode with Iron Man in it. Gork damnit, how can a creative team like this fail so hard?
KamikazeCanuck wrote:You're going to have to define what the "Dark Age" is then.
The Bronze Age is when comics began to get serious. The Dark Age began when this seriousness became deconstructive, in other words with TDKR and Watchmen. Those books unraveled the Bronze Age superhero without bothering to knit him back together. The result was the anti-hero: Cable, the Punisher, Venom, Magneto (now a good guy) and especially Wolverine took over Marvel, for example. But the zenith was promulgated by independent publishers, especially Image. Looking back at those inhumanly bulging biceps and triple Ds, it's easy to dismiss it all as silly. But in the Dark Age mode, being outrageous is the way to be serious. We can still get a taste of it: most people seem to think Nolan's Batman is a "realistic" depiction of a superhero.
Are we in the Dark Age now?
Some people say yes, others say no. I think it's yes and no. Kingdom Come was the first big blow but unlike the story-ending diatribes of Moore (Watchmen is about the end of superheroes) and Miller (TDKR is about the end of superheroes), Waid and Ross's work posed a question: what's next for the superheroes? And there has yet to be a clear, dominant answer to that question. In the meantime, American culture became both more ideological and sinister in the lead up to 9/11. Mark Millar and Warren Ellis gave us a new batch of anti-heroes and told us this is just how superheroes are now. Joe Kelley fought back with Superman in "What's So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way?" The result? I think Lobdell's New 52 books are a good benchmark: young superheroes cannot appeal to any institutions and have to re-invent the wheel. Similarly, the Marvel universe goes to war with itself again and again and again.
Overall I get this sense from your points that you'd think that comics would be better if The Watchmen and Moore never existed.
Then you're not reading what I've posted.
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English Assassin wrote:Both contribute to the Guardian and to the TLS, and that's where you'll find the readership who know Watchmen, but not X-Men.
Trouble is, I still don't care what someone who's read Watchmen but not X-men thinks because he couldn't have understood what Watchmen was actually about, i.e. comic books. Gaiman is little different but I don't see him as influential in the same way as Miller or Moore.
I really don't see how, say, Spawn or Cable owe anything to Moore beyond a nebulous (and very superficial) "darkness".
You're right that there is no direct line. But it's Moore who kills the superheroes; shows them to be fetishists, fascists, perverts, and psychos. The Batman of TDKR is, in Frank Miller's view, is the only character who is NOT morally compromised. Moore's heroes by contrast are all defunct. You can't even call them heroes. They're just super protagonists. So thinking about Wolverine, the issue isn't that Wolverine is the only guy who truly understands the difference between right and wrong in a world gone mad but rather is the personification of Moore's critique of superhero righteousness as delusional.
I'll be seeing my friend Jamie in the pub later, he'll doubtless have bought it.
Ah cheers. Judge Anderson is my absolute favorite character in comics and it's nigh impossible to reliably get either title without buying direct from Essex.
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KamikazeCanuck wrote:It's not right to say "those people" are the ones that watch Kim Kardasian so feth 'em. Comic books can be insular and confusing and sometime the ones that aren't are better.
Accessibility is not necessarily good. Consider the plight of the big two: (1) not many customers overall, (2) most customers have been reading for 10 - 20 years and want all of that to mean something, and (3) it's unclear as to whether "new readers" are anything but a overly optimistic hypothetical. And that's on top of the problems inherent to serial storytelling. (Who can legitimately complain that issue 2 was confusing if they haven't read issue 1?) Chasing the mythical new reader is something that has to be done -- but it seems to be at a cost. What are people like you, KC, going to make of a reboot? And yet Superman belongs to each new reader as much as to the oldest readers. The "Kardashian Fans" are people who go to see a Marvel blockbuster and read one or no comics as a result. And yet still they outspend people pulling 20+ titles a month. That's the only reason to care about them. It's just like Roger Ebert saying that videogames can never be art. But who the feth cares what Roger Ebert thinks about something he knows nothing about?
I think we're actually selling short MacFarlane's influence on comics. Spawn was actually another watershed moment for the industry too.
Speak for yourself. I just posted about how cool I thought and still think some of that stuff is.
KamikazeCanuck wrote: Overall I get this sense from your points that you'd think that comics would be better if The Watchmen and Moore never existed.
Then you're not reading what I've posted.
I am. Perhaps it's responses like that that make it unclear.
Anyways, I agree that someone shouldn't just read The Watchmen as the first and only comic they read. Which in fact a lot of people do. To really appreciate you should have read many, many other comics beforehand but I think that that once again is a compliment to what Moore acheived with it.
I see what you mean about the Dark Age now and that is a good definition but I don't accept the Image revolution and Bad Girls phenomenom as part of it other than the fact every age and generation of creators retains and is influenced by the last. Maybe the Image walkout is the actual end of that age (also could be called the we-don't-need-no-writers walkout). It's hard for me to pick a spot for what finally ended the Bad Girls mini-era from my own personal experience I seem to recall JMS writing Rising Stars as a point were story was more important than art again.
Influence can work in a couple of ways. You could say "wow, Alan Moore is great, I'll try to do stuff like him." But you could just as easily go about your work with no conscious appreciation of why you (can) do the things you do. That's how the dominance of the anti-hero/bad girl archetype (they are the same phenomenon) traces back to Watchmen. It's not that Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld were trying to copy Moore. Rather, they were working in the space that Moore had helped to create. That's why people talk about TDKR and the Watchmen as launching the Dark Age.
Anung Un Rama wrote:I don't want to interrupt your discussion, but there is something I have to get of my chest:
The Ultimate Spider-Man Cartoon still sucks. A lot. First they ruined Coulson. Then they made Venom boring. And now I couldn't even enjoy an episode with Iron Man in it. Gork damnit, how can a creative team like this fail so hard?
How many episodes in is it?
Five so far. The good news is I have no idea what'll happen next because they already used all the material I saw in the trailers.
There are.. or were anyway.. collections of that story and the ...2.... follow up stories as well.
Might be a OOP currently -- IIRC there was a hardback collection released a while back to tie into the fine cosmic work being done by Mr. Abnett and Co. ... should be about if you look.
Yes and on the pull list even; will be my first IDW title. I'm very interested to see how this will play out, especially the "deluxe reprints" part of the IDW deal. I'd love to have a nice version of Necropolis considering how hard it is to find currently. OTOH, I was pretty disappointed with IDW's recent TMNT reprint volume.
I don't know if I missed something in another comic but somehow J'onn J'onzz joined, fought and left the the JLA all in one panel. Literally years are passing in between issues. I'm really dissappointed in this reboot and dropping this title. They should have taken some ques from Ultimate Spider-Man on how to do a reboot. There's no rush, you know your fans like these characters already. Uncle Ben didn't even die until issue #5 in USM.
There basically saying "remember all those crazy adventures we had?" No I don't. Show me, don't tell me about how you had them. I feel like they tricked me with a fake restart.
KamikazeCanuck wrote:I don't know if I missed something in another comic but somehow J'onn J'onzz joined, fought and left the the JLA all in one panel. Literally years are passing in between issues. I'm really dissappointed in this reboot and dropping this title. They should have taken some ques from Ultimate Spider-Man on how to do a reboot. There's no rush, you know your fans like these characters already. Uncle Ben didn't even die until issue #5 in USM.
There basically saying "remember all those crazy adventures we had?" No I don't. Show me, don't tell me about how you had them. I feel like they tricked me with a fake restart.
Considering that Stormwatch and the JLA will butt heads sooner or later I think that little snippet adds a bit of tension and hopefully we'll get more info on what happened. MM seems to be taking a bigger role in this reboot and I like that.
KamikazeCanuck wrote:I don't know if I missed something in another comic but somehow J'onn J'onzz joined, fought and left the the JLA all in one panel. Literally years are passing in between issues. I'm really dissappointed in this reboot and dropping this title. They should have taken some ques from Ultimate Spider-Man on how to do a reboot. There's no rush, you know your fans like these characters already. Uncle Ben didn't even die until issue #5 in USM.
There basically saying "remember all those crazy adventures we had?" No I don't. Show me, don't tell me about how you had them. I feel like they tricked me with a fake restart.
Considering that Stormwatch and the JLA will butt heads sooner or later I think that little snippet adds a bit of tension and hopefully we'll get more info on what happened. MM seems to be taking a bigger role in this reboot and I like that.
Yeah, I miss JJ's presence in the JLA, but clearly they're setting something up.
I think it might well be something to do with the first big company wide crossover which is due.."soon" ... summer maybe ? ... We're also getting those issue #0s soon as well which are to be used to fill in the blanks a bit more too.
Started reading vol. 2 of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen that i bought ages ago and was shocked to see it open with John Carter and 4 armed aliens. Wouldn't have recognized them without the movie.
Manchu wrote:No, I mean the reprint of the original books, which I know you also bought. As I mentioned before, the production values were way low for the price.
I don't have my book here at the moment, but I didn't have nay problem with the quality.
Avengers vs. X-Men has been good. I think they learned some lessons from Fear Itself and out the main story in the main title. Was pulling for the Avengers because Cyclops has been a putz lately but it looks like the X-Men have the edge right now.
I've actually kinda enjoyed A vs X just because Marvel seems to have embraced the inherent stupidity of both crossover events and "vs"-type series. I feel like it's keeping things simple and not taking itself too seriously, which is good because I don't take it seriously either.
The latest Action Comics is another head-scratcher in terms of what relevance it has to the main story, but I have faith in Grant.
Spoiler:
This new incarnation of Mxyzptlk sure has a demonic air around him, doesn't he? Definitely more of an imp in the infernal sense
Got some comics at Free Comic Book Day down at Peotone,
and I wonder, does Free Comic Book Day increase comic book
readership or just give fanboys more stuff to collect?
The later I think. Most of the normal people or "normies" don't even know about Free Comic Book Day. Some people don't even know there's comic book stores.
I think moving away from newstand editions was the biggest mistake the industry made. I never would have bought a comic if I didn't see Spider-Man next to the candy in the check out line when I was a kid. You got to get them hooked when they're young.
My older brother bought his first superhero comic (Heroes Reborn: Iron Man #1) at a newsstand when we brought our cousin to the train station once. We were hooked ever since.
After my displeasure with civil war, the let down that was WWH, and my disgust with spider-man's OMD/BND I had pretty much turned away from marvel. Cosmic still had me hooked though that pretty much petered out after Thanos Imperative and Marvel Adventures has always been a guilty pleasure but everything else 616 and Ultimate fell to the wayside.
I'm glad to say that's not the case anymore. Got convinced to read a couple of current storylines and the work that Hickman has been doing with Ultimate Reed and 616 FF is fantastic. Add in the fact that I'm very interested in Slott's recent spidey stories, and that avenging spider-man is awesome and it looks like marvel is back in my good books. perfect timing too as the new-52 hasn't thrilled me that much.
Finished rereading a few trade collections this week.
Flex Mentallo which is gorgeous, mind meltingly adly funnily wonderful, better than I remembered.
.. and, after a certain cameo, The Infinity Gauntlet which is surprisingly .... well.. kind of dull really. Artwork is quite nice, especially the Perez stuff, but it takes ages to get going really and then you just get the same thing over and over again. Whole affair feels very drawn out.
There's a couple of moments that raise a smile -- Thor being turned to glass and shattered and the various hero deaths etc etc -- but really that's almost so commonplace these days it doesn't really amke much of an impact. Not least as it's painfully obvious from the start that everything will be back to normal/as it was by the stories end.
Last saturday was Free Comic Book Day in Germany. I got myself Spider-Man and Justice League.
The prologue to Spider-Island was fun! Ramos is one of my favourite artists anyway, especially on Spidey books. Buuuuuut it's still the rebootet contiuity and I really don't know if I want to read that. I want to read more Spider-Man, but I boycotted the series after OMD.
First few pages of Justice League #1 we're pretty good. Then again, it is Jim Lee. A huge part of the relaunch gets released in trades, except the ones I'm really interested it like Morrison's Superman and Justice League.
How's the new Wonder Woman so far?
@Anung
Spider-Island was ok I guess especially early on. Nothing to write home about though. Do you guys have Avenging Spider-Man over there?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Oh yeah, saw Avengers movie. I think the hype ruined it a bit for me. It was good but I was expecting best movie ever or something like that.
KamikazeCanuck wrote:@Anung
Spider-Island was ok I guess especially early on. Nothing to write home about though. Do you guys have Avenging Spider-Man over there?
Not yet, I think. Last big story we had was Big Time, Spider-Island is the next arc. There's going to be a Brand New Day-TPB coming out. I'm still not sure if I want to buy it.
Anung Un Rama wrote:But I really want to read more Spider-Man xD
Fine. Actually I was under the impression you'd read it already. Maybe somehow you'll end up liking it or someting.... In the mean time I recommend Avengers. He's not the star of the show but at least Spidey's in it.
So I finally picked up some Comics today at the Local Flea Market. I've always been a fan of spidey and ended up picking up quite a few of the ones from 1994.
Ended up getting Storm Warning (1-3) Funeral Arrangements(1-3) Web of Death(1-4) back from the Edge(1-4) and maximum Clonage (1-6)
for about 20 bucks.
Now my question is: What order should read them in? >.>
I need to get back to reading Daemon Knights. I stopped to focus on my classes back on issue four... how's it gone since tehn, for those that have read it?
I'm also interested in how the new batgirl has gone.
Melissia wrote:I need to get back to reading Daemon Knights. I stopped to focus on my classes back on issue four... how's it gone since tehn, for those that have read it?
I'm also interested in how the new batgirl has gone.
Spoiler:
I've been enjoying the new Batgirl quite a bit; James Gordon Jr. is back, which should make things interesting after Night of the Owls is finished.
I want to order some stuff from England again soon, including comics. I thought I'd just get one more Deadpool classic book, Volume 6, but now I see there's another one coming. The last one, where I learned the truth about Deadpool's "wife", was okay, but it didn't exactly wow me. Now it looks like Joe Kelly's run on the character is over. Should I care about the other books at all?
That's when I kinda lost interest. I think becauase the jokes weren't very funny from the new guy plus it was just a good ending anyway. A while ago I read some random Cable and Deadpool trade. It was hilarious actually but I don't know what caused him to become the completely schizophrenic Deadpool he is now.
Thank you. In that case I'll just stop with Classic Deadpool from here. Though I do still enjoy Daniel Way's stuff and will probably keep reading that.
Damn, just seen a pic of the Lizard from the upcoming Amazing Spiderman film.. interest waining.
I'd been loving the new more bestial version in the UK Spidey comics (which is about 2yrs behind the actual comics themselves) and the look they have come up with for the film is just awful, well in my mind anyways.
Apparently this is a smart and eloquent version of the Lizard so going with the much more feral (and awesome) look of the comic book version is out. Perhaps they thought he needed a still somewhat human face to have long soliloquy's on the ascendency of reptiles.
In another note Batman made me angry this week. Read one of the New 52 Batman comics and:
Spoiler:
Mr. Freeze is no longer married; he never has been. The chick frozen in the tube was one of the earliest cryogenic experiments. Freeze wrote his dissertation on her and after being fired from Wayne Enterprises and having his accident he became fixated on her and invented the relationship.
Ahtman wrote:Apparently this is a smart and eloquent version of the Lizard so going with the much more feral (and awesome) look of the comic book version is out. Perhaps they thought he needed a still somewhat human face to have long soliloquy's on the ascendency of reptiles.
In another note Batman made me angry this week. Read one of the New 52 Batman comics and:
Spoiler:
Mr. Freeze is no longer married; he never has been. The chick frozen in the tube was one of the earliest cryogenic experiments. Freeze wrote his dissertation on her and after being fired from Wayne Enterprises and having his accident he became fixated on her and invented the relationship.
What? The changes his whole character. He was kinda sympathetic before.
I'm actually cool with it (hehe). IMO, Victor Fries was too sympathetic. It reminds me of John Wagner talking about Judge Dredd fan-mail. He noticed kids were writing to him that the world would be much better if someone like Joe Dredd was in charge. Wagner was miffed, as the comic was supposed to be a satire on authoritarianism rather than authoritarian propaganda. Similarly, that Fries did it all "for love" has become unquestioned: love as a cover story for psychosis should not be convincing. If anything, we needed a story where Fries cured Nora but went on with murder and mayhem, a la, Miller's post-plastic surgery Two-Face. But, as I just mentioned, that's so done. The idea of having Fries's "love" be the consequence of his psychopathy is a creative solution.
...wwaayy behind with my reading, got a veritable pile building up of stuff to catch up with, good job I'm incredibly busy for the foreseeable future then...
have read Dial h for Hero #1 and 2 and the first of the Watchmen prequels.
The former is certainly interesting, at the very least. Some very clever powers/characters created thus far... I just worry that the constant merry go round of characters might get a little wearing after a while.
.. on the plus side though...
more Boy Chimney would be welcome, and I was immediately fond of
too.
been meaning to read some of the author's books for a while, this has, at the very least, encouraged me to do so.
Series definitely has a feel that reminds me of Morrisons' Doom Patrol run.... just a bit unsure as to whether the current market will support this..... little surprised this isn't a Vertigo book to be honest... be interested in seeing any crossover anyway.
The Watchmen book is sublime, Mr. Cooke is a genius. Nuff said.
Recently ordered Infinity Gauntlet. It would certainly be very... ambitious, to make that the plot of the 2nd or 3rd Avengers movie.
I loved how all the heroes came together, something we'll probably won't see on the big screen since they right to Spider-Man, the Silver Surfer, Doctor Doom and other characters are sadly not with Marvel. The third act was... weird. Sure, Thanos was omnipotent and unbeatable, but having him fight Galactus and the gods of space was not that interesting IMO.
The new 52 finally hit German shores. My brother got Flash and all the Batman titles, I'm still waiting for my half of the order, which is TPBs of Catwoman, Batgirl and Aquaman. I'm also looking into Justice League, which comes packaged with Teen Titans.
Also bought Ultimate Fallout and the first TPB with the new Spider-Man. Fallout is good so far, I'll have to wait and see if I like Miles Morales. Then again, judging from a Marvel Preview catalogue I won't have to live with him for too long.
Those Dial H pages are interesting. I remember reading a Dial series back in the early 80s, maybe? Back then readers could submit their hero ideas to DC. Not sure if that's still the case. Anyway, those pages are unexpectedly nice and weird...I think I still had the cheesy old series in my head.
Read the new Action Comics and I'm still really liking this Morrison interpretation of Superman.
Spoiler:
That one scene with the JLA said a lot. I love that this Superman is more interested in social justice than just being the muscle who beats up space monsters. Grant, keep this up and you might actually create a Superman with some depth! And of course the subplot with the hunter guy now makes sense.
Anyway, ever notice how useless the US military is in comics? Like just read Ultimate X-Men and they lost the southwest of America to robots. Like, should we send in the army and try to get those states back? Nah, it's fine. C'mon man at least give it the old college try.
Yes, that's another good example. Surely, there's some tanks and planes and stuff somewhere on the eastern seaboard? Nah, just send that guy with the bow.
Let me know how FF is. I only read one issue but was reading Amazing Spider-man at the time which was concurrent with it and it was pretty good.
Speaking of Spider-Man, I read the first TPB with the new ultimate Spidey and he's... nice. I'm still sad that they killed Peter right when things worked out for him, but the new kid brings an interesting supporting cast and new powers with him.
He's been dead a long time over here in the USA, at least in the Ultimate Universe.
And they are just about to launch (it fact #1 might have been this Wednesday?) a crossover between Marvel "Regular" Spidey (Pete) and the Ultimate Universe Spidey (Miles?)!
Anung Un Rama wrote:I thought you stopped reading Spidey, KC.
Speaking of Spider-Man, I read the first TPB with the new ultimate Spidey and he's... nice. I'm still sad that they killed Peter right when things worked out for him, but the new kid brings an interesting supporting cast and new powers with him.
So, is he dead already in the US comics?
I did but he joined the FF quite a while ago. Even now ASM is actually quite a good read. I'm just trying to cut back on comics and have developed a preference for titles where I feel things actually can change and anything can happen. Spider-Man is entertaining though.
Ultimate Parker is long dead. Which is why I read the Ultimate titles. Things are seriously messed up there. I'm hoping they won't just wave a magic wand and pretend it all didn't happen.
Alpharius wrote:
And they are just about to launch (it fact #1 might have been this Wednesday?) a crossover between Marvel "Regular" Spidey (Pete) and the Ultimate Universe Spidey (Miles?)!
Alpharius wrote:
And they are just about to launch (it fact #1 might have been this Wednesday?) a crossover between Marvel "Regular" Spidey (Pete) and the Ultimate Universe Spidey (Miles?)!
Alpharius wrote:
And they are just about to launch (it fact #1 might have been this Wednesday?) a crossover between Marvel "Regular" Spidey (Pete) and the Ultimate Universe Spidey (Miles?)!
Really? That's weird. What's it called?
Are you ready for this?
Spider-Men
I'm not kidding!
Marvel's desperate whoring of the spiderman character is just about enough to make my vomit. I religiously collect most of the spiderman titles out of a sense of loyalty to a childhood hero, but it's getting to the point that it's starting to make me want to quit.
As long as I have been alive, Marvel has not acted any other way with regard to its characters. I'm not saying DC is any different, either. Just that what you're noticing existed before you noticed it. When you were younger, Marvel's need to wring every penny out of Spiderman didn't prevent you from liking him. You shouldn't let it stand in the way now, either.
I think it really started with "One More Day" and the new girlfriend... who has now left him so he can get back with MJ...
What a joke.
But yeah, I understand. I remember the clone saga.
At least Kain is making a decent showing. I really do enjoy the Scarlet Spider series.
KamikazeCanuck wrote:Ultimate Parker is long dead. Which is why I read the Ultimate titles. Things are seriously messed up there. I'm hoping they won't just wave a magic wand and pretend it all didn't happen.
You misunderstand. I meant, when is Miles Morals going to die. I saw a preview image from Spider-Men and assumed it was ultimate Peter holding Miles in his arms.
Not a big fan of a 616/ultimate crossover though. Ultimate has a different tone that wouldn't really mesh well with the original universe.
deathholydeath wrote:I think it really started with "One More Day" and the new girlfriend... who has now left him so he can get back with MJ... What a joke. But yeah, I understand. I remember the clone saga. At least Kain is making a decent showing. I really do enjoy the Scarlet Spider series.
He's back with MJ? Good. That's half the retcon I wanted.
The OMD thing controversy is a whole other thing. There's always been many Spidey-Titles (In fact I think there's less now: No Spectacular, Sensational or Web-of-Spider-man). Yes, he's also an Avenger now but that's ok with me. Avengers is better for it I think.
@Anung. I'm sure Miles will be fine. He just got started. He's only been on like two adventures! Can't kill him now.
The DC relaunch finally reached Germany. Detective Comics is okay, though the new status quo is, well, old. Batman is hunted by the police again, how is this interesting? We've seen it way too often.
Action Comics was really cool and I'd like to read more with the young Superman. Unfortunatly it comes in olny together with Supergril, which I am not even remotly interested in. As a supporting character in JLU or Superman TAS, okay. But in her stand alone series? Not really.
I also gave in and bought the Brand New Day TPB. It has the first 9 nine issues of the relaunch. Should be enough to decide if I like it or not.
All-Star Western
Blue Beetle
Deathstroke
Fury of Firestorm
The tites I'm keeping:
Action Comics
Aquaman
Batgirl
Batman
Batman & Robin
Batwoman
Birds of Prey
Catwoman
Dark Knight
Detective Comics
Justice League
Nightwing
Red Hood & the Outlaws
Superboy
Supergirl
Superman
Teen Titans
Voltron
Voltron Year One
World's Finest
KamikazeCanuck wrote:The OMD thing controversy is a whole other thing. There's always been many Spidey-Titles (In fact I think there's less now: No Spectacular, Sensational or Web-of-Spider-man). Yes, he's also an Avenger now but that's ok with me. Avengers is better for it I think.
@Anung. I'm sure Miles will be fine. He just got started. He's only been on like two adventures! Can't kill him now.
The ultimate universe is generally treated with much more of an axe than 616. If sales dipped or there was significant public outcry about something they wouldn't have much of a problem retiring the character. They've done it numerous times already with other lines.
KamikazeCanuck wrote:The OMD thing controversy is a whole other thing. There's always been many Spidey-Titles (In fact I think there's less now: No Spectacular, Sensational or Web-of-Spider-man). Yes, he's also an Avenger now but that's ok with me. Avengers is better for it I think.
@Anung. I'm sure Miles will be fine. He just got started. He's only been on like two adventures! Can't kill him now.
The ultimate universe is generally treated with much more of an axe than 616. If sales dipped or there was significant public outcry about something they wouldn't have much of a problem retiring the character. They've done it numerous times already with other lines.
Yes, that's one of the things I like about the Utimate U. Still, I'll be quite surprised if the kill off Miles Morales in that mini-series.
So, I primed by FF reading while waiting for the volumes of Hickman's work to arrive, by reading a "Greatest of" volume that reminded me why I liked those characters (especially Doom) so much as a kid. While planning my pull list update, I even considered putting some Marvel titles on there. But where the feth am I supposed to start? And Marvel's webpage doesn't seem to help out with this at all. The New 52 was truly an excellent idea, even if it wasn't exactly a clean reboot. I hope DC will attempt to keep things a neat as possible so others can start or re-start comic reading over the next few years. With Marvel, I have no idea what is up.
Well I guess it depends on what characters you like. I think New Avengers (Vol. 1) #1 is kind of like the starting point of the current storyline. House of M could be argued to be that too, certainly for the mutants.
Hi chaps, I haven't posted in this thread before, but I thought I'd share something with you before I receive the (probably lengthy) ban that is surely coming my way. We found this at work the other day:
Albatross wrote:Hi chaps, I haven't posted in this thread before, but I thought I'd share something with you before I receive the (probably lengthy) ban that is surely coming my way. We found this at work the other day:
I noticed that I had not been getting my comics for a while. When they come by post, you have to be a bit patient -- could be sooner or later and that's just the way it is. But I had missed every issue 9 with two weeks of 10s already in stores. That couldn't be a USPS folly. So I called DC and they told me there was a hold on my account. According to them, the USPS told them my address was no good. Strangely, I get all the rest of my mail from the USPS every day but Sunday ... In any case, DC had not bothered to let me know about this at all.
Not only had DC not informed me about the hold but the "hold" didn't have anything to do with actually holding my issues. Their plan is to simply not send anything out and tack on extra months to the subscription on the end -- while your comics get sold to someone else. The result was that I missed the entire gamut of Night of the Owls crossover issues -- and, being a Bat-fan, this was especially jarring given that I subscribed to all the rather tangential "Bat-titles" (minus Batwing but including All-Star Western). So I canceled every single direct sub and revamped my pull list (as posted yesterday) for my local store.
One other thing: DC also informed me they had transferred my sub of RHatO to Green Lantern. News to me. I asked why and the lady said RHatO was being discontinued. Now that would be news to everyone, including Scott Lobdell I imagine. Why I was assigned Green Lantern? Seriously, nothing about my direct subs suggested that I cared anything about GL -- why not JLA? It has Batman in it at least.
So I read the first two stories from Brand New Day. I don't want to say it's stupid, because I was really tryinvg to get into it with an open mind, but man... this is pretty lame.
I'm looking forward to what they're doing next with Jonah, but the rest of the "new status quo" was pretty annoying. Spider-Man can't afford new webs? Yeah, that's really original. Menace seems like a real lame villian too. They do make jokes about him being another Kobold villian, but that doesn't make him less stupid. And don't get me started on Jackpot!
I dropped off of spidey after the whole omd/bnd fiasco but recently got back on, starting with "big time" and reading from there. I found it rather entertaining and don't really feel as though i missed anything between omd and big time. so if you aren't liking bnd give big time a shot.
I'll admit up front I haven't read all 56 pages of this thread, so if someone else has already addressed this, I apologize.
I wanted to ask though, has anyone read the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic from IDW? I looked through a preview of "Change is Constant," a collection of the first few issues and it looked pretty awesome.
What have those of you who have read the new series thought of it so far? Worth getting into?
@Manchu: That sucks. I thought you used a subscription box at your friendly neighborhood comic book store.
@Anung & wana: I'm like you wana I didn't pick it up again until "Big Time'. That's pretty much the opposite of what you're reading now Anung. They realize that Parker is probably one of the top 10 smartest guys on the planet so why is he always living like a bum? He gets his dream job of being a scientist with unlimited resources finally and the fun insues. Honestly, might be a good idea to skip everything up until then but I know you're starved for Spidey.
Hordini wrote:I wanted to ask though, has anyone read the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic from IDW? I looked through a preview of "Change is Constant," a collection of the first few issues and it looked pretty awesome.
What have those of you who have read the new series thought of it so far? Worth getting into?
I've only read the first TPB so far and I really enjoyed it. It's another reboot and a slightly altered origin story but it works really well. It's darker, but not quite as dark as the original series. Though that might just come from the fact that it's in color this time.
KamikazeCanuck wrote:@Anung & wana: I'm like you wana I didn't pick it up again until "Big Time'. That's pretty much the opposite of what you're reading now Anung. They realize that Parker is probably one of the top 10 smartest guys on the planet so why is he always living like a bum? He gets his dream job of being a scientist with unlimited resources finally and the fun insues. Honestly, might be a good idea to skip everything up until then but I know you're starved for Spidey.
I liked the Spider-Island preview I read, I just prefer buying and reading trades.
Anung Un Rama wrote:The DC relaunch finally reached Germany. Detective Comics is okay, though the new status quo is, well, old. Batman is hunted by the police again, how is this interesting? We've seen it way too often.
Action Comics was really cool and I'd like to read more with the young Superman. Unfortunatly it comes in olny together with Supergril, which I am not even remotly interested in. As a supporting character in JLU or Superman TAS, okay. But in her stand alone series? Not really.
I also gave in and bought the Brand New Day TPB. It has the first 9 nine issues of the relaunch. Should be enough to decide if I like it or not.
I've really been enjoying Supergirl. They did a good job on not making her a completely flat fem-superman like they have with past versions. Batman being hunted by the police lasts all of like... 6 pages in toto IIRC.
It's funny...I meant to post here a week or two ago and ask if we were going to see an Owlman in the Court of Owls. And lo and behold, it seems like we got him. Kinda. He's not from Earth-3 (or "Earth-2" for that matter), but even his Thomas Wayne Jr. identity fits (at least with Morrison's "Earth-2" story, which I didn't think was canon although everyone seems to treat it that way).
But what the *heck* does this mean for the whole RIP/Doctor Hurt/Return of Bruce Wayne storyline? I'm not a continuity freak, but the whole Thomas Wayne Jr. things was already dug up and used very recently. This DC reboot is confusing as heck at times.
It's funny...I meant to post here a week or two ago and ask if we were going to see an Owlman in the Court of Owls. And lo and behold, it seems like we got him. Kinda. He's not from Earth-3 (or "Earth-2" for that matter), but even his Thomas Wayne Jr. identity fits (at least with Morrison's "Earth-2" story, which I didn't think was canon although everyone seems to treat it that way).
But what the *heck* does this mean for the whole RIP/Doctor Hurt/Return of Bruce Wayne storyline? I'm not a continuity freak, but the whole Thomas Wayne Jr. things was already dug up and used very recently. This DC reboot is confusing as heck at times.
With regard to continuity: as I understand it, unless they explicitly mention something happening, it didn't.
Manchu wrote:Thomas Wayne Jr. had nothing to do with the Doctor Hurt arc.
EDIT: Well, I should rephrase, the TW Jr. "identity" of Simon Hurt has nothing to do (other than thematically) with the identity of Owlman.
Spoiler:
But Hurt was at the same facility as Lincoln March, right? Both saying they were Thomas Wayne Jr.? I'm sure there's a way to rectify this. One might be that Lincoln March isn't TW Jr., but has been made to think so. Otherwise, it seems like RIP, etc is out and Snyder's treading on territory that Morrison already visited a couple years ago.
Edit: Okay, so I guess the March Willowwood facility was specifically for children, where the Hurt facility was Willowwood Asylum for all ages, since he entered as an adult. So either there are two facilities by that name and you have two individuals going in and out of those facilities (which I think is convoluted) or the Morrison storylines don't exist anymore. Or at least some of them are gone, since the Batman Inc. members and Damian are still around.
It's funny, I had the Owlman part figured out, but the TW Jr. part is really confusing me.
Well, I read Morrison's "1234" last night, his take on the Fantastic Four. It reminded me that the Watchmen is ultimately for people who don't like comics.
But I don't want to get ahead of myself.
Imagine if the Fantastic Four weren't just cheerful, perfect people who had super powers but were realistic people with realistic problems who had super powers. Well, Grant Morrison revolutionizes -- er, wait, nope, that's what Stan Lee did when he created the Fantastic Four forty years before Morrison got a hold of them. We can say then that Morrison is true to their roots when he gives us a mopey Ben, a restless Johnny, a neglected Sue, and a guilt-ridden Reed. In fact, Morrison does absolutely nothing new with these characters -- which is weird, because they usually bring him in to break a title down into its elemental pieces and flip them around in a novel way to remind us why we ever liked that title in the first place. And we know that Morrison did his usual research. He even references Doctor Doom's invisible ring that controls his mask. So why is Morrison's Fantastic Four no different from Lee's?
It's as easy as not fixing what isn't broken. But this isn't just another FF story, either. The FF are already a deconstruction of comic book superheroes but Morrison can't resist the urge to deconstruct somebody ... how about the theatrical Doctor Doom? Who better to psychologically unmask than the man who's mask is a psychological fixation? The question begs another: why is Doom so operatic when his nemeses are so down-to-earth? Doom, the ruler of a country who walks around dressed in crazy armor while spouting awkward prose poetry (I can imagine him objecting "Who dares denigrate the diction of DOOOOM??") is hardly an everyday guy like Aunt Petuna's blue-eyed nephew. Sure, Reed isn't exactly the type of dude you'd meet in any old coffee shop but he gets to deal with the guilt and isolation of being different, same as Ben. Doom, on the other hand, is straight out of comic books.
That makes him the perfect foil to more realistic comic book heroes in Stan Lee's post-modern turn. Looking back to the earliest days of Action comics, the good guy was the "supernatural" element but crime was very mundane: thievery, thuggery, and corruption instead of costumed criminals with death rays and demonic patrons. For Lee, the FF would be the exact opposite: real people struggling with strange powers against a sorcerer-scientist megalomaniac wearing a cape and cowl. As I said, this seemed to have been irresistible to Morrison. What if Doctor Doom was just a normal guy, too? How would that change our interpretation of his character?
Well, Morrison reasons that Victor von Doom is basically just a petty child. The plot has Doom playing with reality like it's a chess game with human lives as nothing more than the pawns. He's even got little figures of the FF family. And he also seems driven to make Reed believe that the FF is responsible for Doom being the way that he is. By the end of the story, Sue is just screaming at Victor to grow up and stop wasting the FF's time with his silly, envy-fueled schemes. Doctor Doom is stripped down to a pathetic nobody begging for validation from the people he hurts.
Is that insightful? Grant Morrison is pretty damn insightful so his take on Doom in 1234 is a big disappointment. In the real world, villains are usually pathetic people. Consider Anders Breivik, the man who thought of himself as a Christian knight errant so as to justify the murder of children. There's really nothing at all grand or even interesting about such people, despite their own pleas to be taken seriously. That's not the reaction I have ever had to Doctor Doom. Doom is a complex guy. Remember his backstory? And how about the fact that the people of Latveria actually love him? He's consistently portrayed as having some twisted sense of honor. His whole career as Doctor Doom started because he was trying to save his mom's soul from hell.
Doom is not some Breivik to be scorned as a malicious idiot and it's a pity that Morrison writes him as such. It culminates with Doom taking off his mask to reveal -- NOTHING. That's right, empty armor. (And by the way, this is an allusion that Doom himself creates to prove to Ben Grimm that Reed Richards is the real Doctor Doom, i.e., responsible for Doom's destructive behavior. He's a good writer, that Morrison, even when he's not at his best.) When we see Breivik sitting smugly in the court room telling everyone that he's serious, not insane, we should see an emptiness -- of validity. But Doom is the opposite: behind the mask there is something worthwhile. The essence of the character is scarred nobility. Just as Reed never gave up on Ben, he never gives up on Victor. In turn, Doctor Doom is both infuriated and seemingly touched. He has saved the FF on quite a few occasions, after all.
Morrison's deconstruction of Doctor Doom is probably very meaningful to readers who don't like Doctor Doom and think comics should be more "realistic." But the great thing about comics, folks, is that they don't have to be "realistic." When Alan Moore wrote the Watchmen, he insisted that we take superheroes "seriously" and then made a mockery of them as cold aliens, hateful perverts, and impotent victims. Moore wasn't blazing trails by deconstructing superheroics. Stan Lee pioneered that method in Fantastic Four in 1961. Lee did it for people who liked comics, igniting an era of comic book fandom and basically making Marvel the household name it remains today. But Moore did it for people who didnt like comics, who felt they were childish and dull, and needed to "grow up" (which apparently means "develop psychological problems"). Moore's own analysis of his work's impact is simple: nothing good has ever been written since.
Morrison's take on Doctor Doom seems to fall into the tradition of Moore rather than Lee. And yet, Morrison can't help but follow Lee when it comes to the Fantastic Four themselves. The result is that the FF, contrasted against Doom's pettiness, come off as genuinely great people despite their faults. One might almost say that the FF seem to stand for liking comics and Doom stands for not liking them. I wish I could say that. But Doom was a poor choice to run through the wringer of Alan Moore's deconstruction. Doom, after all, stands for comics books more than any of Reed, Sue, Ben, or Johnny. You might say, they're just normal people stuck in Doom's world. By the end of 1234, you feel like Doom is trying to make the real world into the comic book one -- and that it's just childish, mean, and stupid.
When Sue scoffs at Doom for playing with "toys" (she holds up his figures of the FF and tells him "you should be ashamed of yourself") I couldn't help but be aware of myself as a 27-year-old man reading a comic book. That's a weird signal to send there, Grant.
Automatically Appended Next Post: @gorgon: Ohhh boy ...
Spoiler:
There's only one Willowood. Hurt went there, with Thomas and Martha lying about who he was -- creating the name "Thomas Wayne Jr.," which Morrison took from a defunct (thanks CoIE!) Batman book where Bruce really did have a sick brother. Snyder has "Lincoln March" claim to be TWJr and that his allegedly phony name comes from the street corner where Martha Wayne had a car accident while pregnant with him. March ominously says he was thus "born hurt" -- getting chills yet? -- and that Thomas and Martha hid him at Willowood.
I think Snyder is trying to remind us that Simon Hurt turned out to be a liar, despite us having believed from time to time that he really was Thomas Wayne Sr.
Yeah, I know the old TW Jr story. Heck, I might have the first guy here to bring up TW Jr as a potential identity for Hurt back during that whole arc. So you're asserting that Owlman (prolly best to drop the pseudonyms at this point) is either lying or delusional and was never at Willowwood, therefore there's no issue with two men of different ages but the same apparent identity being at the same facility.
I guess that all fits, but it does make this Owlman a little less interesting as a villain if he's not Bruce's mirror image. And it still seems like Morrison just finished treading the whole fake insane TW Jr/secret society ground. Unless of course there is a connection between Hurt and Owlman. I missed the "born hurt" line...good catch. So Owlman = Son of Hurt?
Whatever "whiteboard" scenarios you might hear from DiDio, the New 52 Continuity is a work in progress. You have to remember, continuity is just a marketing device. It's there to get you to invest. But it's a double edged sword: too much continuity and there's no room for new, exciting products. Think of it as IP management. Even Morrison behaves this way. He strung everybody along with Dr. Hurt on purpose, to keep selling books. Snyder is doing the same thing. Obviously, neither of them are in it just to sell books so I expect we'll see an eventual tie-in with RIP. Whether that will be "in-continuity" with the RIP storyline or not is impossible to tell. All we know is that there's a three-way allusion going on here revolving around the anti-Batman concept.
Automatically Appended Next Post: As for speculation:
Spoiler:
My own guess is that Owlman is brainwashed into re-telling the Hurt story, either by Hurt or by the Court of Owls. I'd be happier to leave Hurt aside and have it be the Court of Owls playing yet another sick joke on Bruce.
My favorite run on FF was Mark Waid's. Doom was featured heavily and he was quite evil. In fact he was so evil people actually complained that Doom shouldn't be portrayed like that. That he was more of "saturday morning cartoon" villian not a murderer.
Also, I like The Watchmen and I like comic books too Manchu. No matter what you say that will always be true.
Oh I like The Watchmen myself, at least in the sense that I recognize how fething good it is. I just don't like Alan Moore's take on superheroes.
I have been doing all this Fantastic Four research in prep for reading Hickman's Fantastic Four and then his FF (er, Future Foundation) so ... here's hoping that it's worth it.
I haven't read much FF in my day but Mark Waid made me really care about what was going and was a page turner so maybe check that one out if you just want a good read.
I don't want to go over the whole Watchmen thing again but I sometimes get this sense that you think there a certain way comics are "supposed" to be and I reject that notion. The great thing about comics is they can literally be about anything and in any style or tone.
That's not his premise. It's one others may have put on his work. Anyways, I don't know if you like Morrison's take on Doom and the FF or not but from your description I don't. Try Waid's because it sounds like the anti-Morrison version for better or worse.
I don't like Morrison's portrayal of Doom -- hence saying "it's a pity" that Morrison, an otherwise insightful writer, treats Doom this way. By your description, I wouldn't say Waid's Doom is the opposite. Just more "villains should be realistically and thoroughly evil" which IMO has nothing to do with Doctor Doom.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
KamikazeCanuck wrote:That's not his premise. It's one others may have put on his work.
Most recently, on Before Watchmen:
I would have thought, from a DC perspective, that’s it’s a lose-lose perspective, unless they did something better or as good as 'Watchmen.' But realistically, that’s not going to happen, otherwise it would have happened before.
I think Moore, unusually, is pretty reasonable in that article. The quote I would take away was how The Watchmen was supposed to be an alternative to the endless soap-opera comics.
KamikazeCanuck wrote:I haven't read much FF in my day but Mark Waid made me really care about what was going and was a page turner so maybe check that one out if you just want a good read.
I don't want to go over the whole Watchmen thing again but I sometimes get this sense that you think there a certain way comics are "supposed" to be and I reject that notion. The great thing about comics is they can literally be about anything and in any style or tone.
I hated his take on Doom - I felt it was way out of character, way over the top and was done mostly for cheap thrills/shock value/etc.
I'm glad to report that the more recent take on Doom is much more in character and, more importantly, characterful.
I've only read the first two trades and I saw one that took place in the 60s but I wasn't aware there was more than that.
Automatically Appended Next Post: @Anung
Watched the first 2 episodes of Ultimate Spider-Man. It's pretty good actually. Surprised you didn't like it. It's pretty funny IMO.
KamikazeCanuck wrote:@Anung Watched the first 2 episodes of Ultimate Spider-Man. It's pretty good actually. Surprised you didn't like it. It's pretty funny IMO.
I've seen 8 episodes so far and I just can't stand it. The concept of the story itself is pretty solid (S.H.I.E.L.D. training, other young heroes, Spidey fightning other villians) but the execution is terrible. There are these "Round One, FIGHT!" moments, like they're trying to reproduce the Scott Pilgrim videogame feeling, but with nothing else to back it up. And all those huge comic-effects, little Spider-Man angel and devil on his shoulders, his talking to the camera. Those are not bad choices for a cartoon, but complety out of the blue for Spidey while at the same time taking away the usual Spidey-humor.
Peter is a clumsy idiot. I know he's a bit of a dork, but not like that. There's a real missed opportunity here with him developing a relationship with Fury (something they talked about in the comics) but instead he rather has daydreams about jetpacks.
The team is stupid. Making Iron Fist and Luke Cage teenagers totally rewrites their backstory, but the way the show works, it doesn't seem like we're getting them to know them any better. And while they're all kinda different, it basicaly comes down to "everybody is good at punching things". I also hate Nova.
What bothers me most was how excited I was about this show. With the inclusion of Agent Coulson they basically said "yes, this is the Marvel movieverse" which was a fantastic opportunity for world bulding and then they make it this stupid, over-the-top, Deadpool-ish chaos that manage to ruin several of my favourite Marvel characters and things in a row (the Iron Spider armor, Luke Cage and Venom. Twice.)
Well I wasn't sure what kind of tone it would be. I thought it would be more like Ultimate Spider-Man obviously but it's just for kids. It's a comedic team show. I like Luke Cage, Iron Fist and Nova so it's just nice to see them in something.
(but yes, that's the worst rendition of Venom ever).
I had the same thought about Deadpool actually. This is what a kids cartoon about Deadpool would be like but that's why I figured you like it.
Catwoman was... pretty good actually. I miss the relationship she had with Batman while Dini was writing it, but this new (?) take on the character was pretty cool.
Sure, you could complain about blatant sexism and the "rape of Batman" but that didn't bother me. Maybe it just means that I'm not very sensitive to this kind of thing.
Aquaman was surprisingly awesome. I loved how they just keep on dissing Aquaman for being Aquaman. "You can't eat fish, you talk to them."
New Catwoman is one of my fave lines, although to be fair their is barely anything with a Batman stamp I haven't been enjoying.
Hell even Voodoo has been managing to turn itself around the past few issues, that I'm back up to 'not sure, keep reading' at the mo.
The only comic that is still bugging me is Red Hood, I want it to be awesome and there have been moments I've really liked, but still bizarre and annoying things keep happening that keep making me doubt the whole set up of the comic.
I read the first volume of Hickman's Fantastic Four this past weekend. In the first arc, Reed Richards stumbles across a interdimensional fraternity of other versions of himself who have banded together in order to "solve everything." This is a truly awesome story in every sense one could ask for, with its simultaneous bold, flashy sci-fi and human warmth. It's certainly going to be in a "Greatest of" collection of Fantastic Four stories someday, right alongside of John Byrne's definitive work on the title. The other story in this volume, however, is pretty much forgettable -- and the art, particularly the faces, is frustratingly bad.
They told some neat stories. "This Man, This Monster" is probably the best. But from what I've read, the FF really lived up to their potential under John Byrne. For example, he made Invisible Woman a powerful, important character; introduced the crazy Nathaniel Richards arc, and replaced Thing with She Hulk. "Terror In Tiny Town" seems to me to be the major touchstone moment regarding the characters' identities, rivaling even the first issue. In "Solve Everything," Hickman captures both the invincible imagination of Stan Lee and the vivaciousness of John Byrne, and like his storied predecessors, Hickman employs these far flung adventures to ultimately reinforce the down-to-earth concept of family as the central pillar of this title. It's a superb tale indeed. Regarding what follows, I can only hope it will pay off in volume 2.
Manchu wrote:They told some neat stories. "This Man, This Monster" is probably the best. But from what I've read, the FF really lived up to their potential under John Byrne. For example, he made Invisible Woman a powerful, important character; introduced the crazy Nathaniel Richards arc, and replaced Thing with She Hulk. "Terror In Tiny Town" seems to me to be the major touchstone moment regarding the characters' identities, rivaling even the first issue. In "Solve Everything," Hickman captures both the invincible imagination of Stan Lee and the vivaciousness of John Byrne, and like his storied predecessors, Hickman employs these far flung adventures to ultimately reinforce the down-to-earth concept of family as the central pillar of this title. It's a superb tale indeed. Regarding what follows, I can only hope it will pay off in volume 2.
That is a VERY good point, and if there was a way to get all of Byrne's work collected and in color, I'd be all over it!
Actually, is there such a way now?
I was REALLY excited for his Danger Unlimited creator owned work (very much his version of the FF), but that only lasted for 4 issues, I think.
I'm not sure if it was him that I liked or his world away from the Avengers. If I'm honest, I think I liked Thor as a title mostly because of Beta Ray Bill.
KamikazeCanuck wrote:What do you guys think about the fact Donald Blake pretty much doesn't exist anymore?
I love the Old School Marvel books, so in that sense, I miss Blake a tiny bit, but I think Thor works just fine without him.
I don't have that nostalgia for old-school Thor so I think it's an improvement. It didn't really make much sense for an Asgardian god to have an alter ego.
Ah, those X-Men. They've segregated themselves from humanity and their leader's closest council it The White Queen, Magneto, Namor and Juggernaut. They have an "extinction team" whose purpose is to be their MAD nuclear threat and now they're in a full blown war with the Avengers. Xavier's dream seems well and truly dead.
Automatically Appended Next Post: And then after posting that I read the last AvX. Whoa, things got pretty crazy there. I thought this would just be an old fashioned punch up between the two factions but something else is happening entirely. I'm pleasantly surprised but I wish comics still had the months printed under the issue number on the cover. It can be pretty confusing to know which issue to read in these mega events when you have a giant pile of comics.
KamikazeCanuck wrote:
And then after posting that I read the last AvX. Whoa, things got pretty crazy there. I thought this would just be an old fashioned punch up between the two factions but something else is happening entirely. I'm pleasantly surprised but I wish comics still had the months printed under the issue number on the cover. It can be pretty confusing to know which issue to read in these mega events when you have a giant pile of comics.
Agreed!
I'm not sure what the 'right' order is for all of this stuff!!!
Each of the "rounds" of the AvXmen issues has a centerfold somewhere in it that tells you which issues of the other series (secret avengers, X-men Academy, Wolverine and the X-Men, Avengers, etc.) are running concurrently with that round.
Ya, but even those are tricky because that page of comics also needs to be read in a certain order. For example, Secret Avengers before the rest. I know they want it to look cool but one of those old fashioned chronological checklists would probably be better.
USM is pretty dang bad, but then that is the format they want. They want 4-8yo kids to like it and they do. Sadly this will most likely be the same format the new Avengers cartoon will be like as well. No continuity, no character development, silly jokes.
This is sad since they already had Super Hero Squad for all that.
NOOO! Is this a complete universe reboot or just resetting some titles to #1? From the looks of that cover (which actaully looks like a prank due to Rocket Raccoon there) looks more like just some number resetting. That's pretty normal for Marvel; they like their #1s.
"Everything's going to be one nice melting pot of Marvel Universe goodness," says Brevoort, who insists that Marvel NOW! is not a reboot. "This is the same Marvel Universe you were reading about the month before and the same characters. They haven't gone back to square one — all of that history isn't out the window."
There will be closer ties to the Marvel Studios movies, too — the new African-American Nick Fury will play a significant role in a new book, Brevoort says, matching Samuel L. Jackson's cinematic super-spy look — and "a concerted effort to unify all houses." That means the X-Men, who have tended to operate as a separate line since the 1990s, will be more woven into the Marvel Universe tapestry, as will Rocket Raccoon, the furry member of the Guardians of the Galaxy, and other cosmic characters.
Nah, it's just a bunch of number 1s. Marvel has a new #1 every month anyway, so this is just more of the same to me. Let's not forget Black Fury actually did come from the comics. They could have just had the main universe abduct Ultimate Fury and that would have gotten the black Fury they want but they decided to go with some kinda Fury jr. guy.
Poor, poor white Fury. He didn't fight Nazis in WWII just to be replaced by some other Fury....who also fights Nazis...in current times....where am I going with this? Damn Nazis!!!
My point is, DC didn't "start fresh" either. They just did whatever suited them. Looks like Marvel is going the same route, albeit with the box office in mind.
So instead of a new continuity replacing an old one, the idea of continuity itself is going out the window.
Manchu wrote:My point is, DC didn't "start fresh" either. They just did whatever suited them. Looks like Marvel is going the same route, albeit with the box office in mind.
So instead of a new continuity replacing an old one, the idea of continuity itself is going out the window.
In what way? There's already a comic called Avengers Assemble that stars the movie cast. It is not out of continuity, it just happens to star the guys in the movie. That's how Marvel does it. Like when the X-Men got uniforms that were quite movie-like but didn't actually reboot anything. They just looked like the movie guys now. All these number 1s appear to be very much in continuity.
I guess we have different definitions of continuity. When things inside a fictional world are invented for no other reason than the existence of something outside of that world, I don't see that as continuity. Continuity means a progression from within the story.
Ya, that's definately not any definition of continuity. Regardless, they are coming from within the story. It's explained in-universe but obviously in real life they are hoping the buzz from the movies will make kids also pick up a similiar looking comic. It doesn't actually work but they want to keep trying I guess.
I enjoyed them all very much, War of Kings was the best Marvel event in years. Great artwork, nice story, interesting cast of characters and t'was able to effect ( or threaten anyway) some real/long lasting changes.
It's hard to describe any set of stories that includes Dr. Strange and Adam Strange as being the same genre, except for a super-broad "science fiction and fantasy."
... and this to show that superhero comics aren't a genre? Why, that is the very definition of the superhero comic genre.
We'll know the superhero movie boom is drawing to a close when the studios try to reboot a few of the "A" list heroes and it fails, really badly, at the box office. Or when they just give up on trying to milk those small number of cash cows, and we start seeing only movies about heroes who are somewhat less overexposed.
So the boom is over when either big name heroes are rebooted or B-List characters get movies? That means the boom is over no matter what -- and moreover, according to that "argument," it was over before it even happened. And then there's the little problem of Daredevil, Blade, Punisher, and Ghostrider all having movies from the last decade. Also, Iron Man wasn't exactly the most popular hero before Favreau's first movie.
It's hard to describe any set of stories that includes Dr. Strange and Adam Strange as being the same genre, except for a super-broad "science fiction and fantasy."
... and this to show that superhero comics aren't a genre? Why, that is the very definition of the superhero comic genre.
We'll know the superhero movie boom is drawing to a close when the studios try to reboot a few of the "A" list heroes and it fails, really badly, at the box office. Or when they just give up on trying to milk those small number of cash cows, and we start seeing only movies about heroes who are somewhat less overexposed.
So the boom is over when either big name heroes are rebooted or B-List characters get movies? That means the boom is over no matter what -- and moreover, according to that "argument," it was over before it even happened. And then there's the little problem of Daredevil, Blade, Punisher, and Ghostrider all having movies from the last decade. Also, Iron Man wasn't exactly the most popular hero before Favreau's first movie.
Don't forget about Hellboy and Sin City. Those weren't exactly screaming out for a movie to be made about them. Obscure properties that have done well.
Manchu wrote:So the boom is over when either big name heroes are rebooted or B-List characters get movies? That means the boom is over no matter what -- and moreover, according to that "argument," it was over before it even happened. And then there's the little problem of Daredevil, Blade, Punisher, and Ghostrider all having movies from the last decade. Also, Iron Man wasn't exactly the most popular hero before Favreau's first movie.
What might have made for sense as an argument would have been that only the 'A-list' of Superman, Batman, Spideman, the X-Men and one or two others are necessarily viewed in Hollywood as guaranteed box office draws. Less-prominent characters are more likely to require a well-made (or at least fan-pleasing) film to provide a return on the studio's investment - something that's much more difficult to guarantee. Most of your B-list examples were critically panned and didn't (to the best of my knowledge) generate impressive returns. I don't, by way of example, recall Punisher fans being exactly delighted by any of the various attempts to bring the character to life on celluloid, and words are not adequate to explain the bilious rage of Hellblazer fans upon the release of the comically ghastly Constantine.
Just finished reading volume 2 of Hickman's Fantastic Four. To recap, I was mesmerized by the humanity of the first story in volume 1 and then kind of let down by the second. It's not that the second story was bad (well, the art was pretty bad) but it was a bridge to other things that, to be honest, I don't totally understand even after reading volume 2. I guess other stuff was going on in the Marvel universe at the time (go figure). That impression continues in the background of the volume 2 stories. But the art leaps back to A+ quality and the set-ups are worthy of Stan Lee: the Moleman asks the FF for help dealing with his devolving Moloids; Sue Storm steps up as ambassador to a long-lost undersea world, Annhilus and Blastarr wage their war over the Negative Zone as the Inhumans and their ontological allies rally to prove their worth as against their Kree engineers. It's a breathtaking ride. I think this scale is the definitive aspect of the FF: there is no problem too big. As the first story from volume 1 set it, the goal of these people is to "solve everything." And everything is huge, wacky, operatic, and yet very human.
In short, if you've ever had any interest in the Fantastic Four then you'll be doing yourself a tremendous favor by picking up the collected Hickman run.
Without having done any research on the topic, does anyone here know of some decent samurai or ninja(Naruto isn't a ninja. Ninja's don't wear orange) comics?
Something along the lines of the Samurai movie trilogy or movies like Sanjuro and Yojimbo.
It was just something I heard about while poking around the Marvel universe of late in relation to my FF reading. I remember thinking, "KamikazeCanuck would hate this."
Quentin Beck being dead, going to hell, being resurrected after two other people have donned the Mysterio title, only to replace them, basically making his original death meaningless.
Manchu wrote:Quentin Beck being dead, going to hell, being resurrected after two other people have donned the Mysterio title, only to replace them, basically making his original death meaningless.
I dunno why a character like Quentin Beck even needs to come back. Who the hell cares? The great thing about non-powered villains is that just about any lunatic can put on the costume and bring new, cool stuff to the role.
Mysterio was cool. My favourite Spidey villian has to be the Shocker though. I just love that guy.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I hope, whenever we get that Amazing Spider-Man sequel, the first few minutes will be just him beating up a random super villian like Shocker. Kinda like a Bond intro.
Manchu wrote:Quentin Beck being dead, going to hell, being resurrected after two other people have donned the Mysterio title, only to replace them, basically making his original death meaningless.
No one is shocked. It's just KC and I have talked about the "endless soap opera" idea of comics (as Alan Moore calls it) many times before and he usually disapproves of it while I usually approve of it. It looks like we see eye-to-eye regarding Quentin Beck, however.
I don't make points to "stir up gak" those are my actual opinions.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Anung Un Rama wrote:Mysterio was cool. My favourite Spidey villian has to be the Shocker though. I just love that guy.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I hope, whenever we get that Amazing Spider-Man sequel, the first few minutes will be just him beating up a random super villian like Shocker. Kinda like a Bond intro.
I find there's two takes on Shocker. 1) Generic Bad Guy Shocker and 2) Shocker who has a really bad anxiety problem and can barely make it through a single day. I like the second one more because it's a little different. Which Shocker is it you like?
Alpharius wrote:I'm glad the original Mysterio is back under the fish bowl - just because!
Again, I haven't actually read the stories. It just seems to me that this kind of villain is exactly the kind that could go through successive identities without disrupting the line-up. Contrast this to Jean Grey being missing for so long. No matter what, Emma Frost will never fill those ... ahem, shoes. And you can't just get another redhead in a yellow suit either.
Though it’s been called a soft reboot by some, Marvel NOW! is looking like a definitive change in its first month of solicits, with 9 titles ending as the Uncanny Avengers begins what the solicits call “the greatest era of the Marvel Universe”.
Captain America, The Mighty Thor, Incredible Hulk, Invincible Iron Man, Fantastic Four, FF, Uncanny X-Men, New Mutants, and X-Men: Legacy will all be ending in October, according to Marvel’s Solicits.
KamikazeCanuck wrote:I find there's two takes on Shocker. 1) Generic Bad Guy Shocker and 2) Shocker who has a really bad anxiety problem and can barely make it through a single day. I like the second one more because it's a little different. Which Shocker is it you like?
I'm not sure. It's been ages since I've read anything with him in it.
Though it’s been called a soft reboot by some, Marvel NOW! is looking like a definitive change in its first month of solicits, with 9 titles ending as the Uncanny Avengers begins what the solicits call “the greatest era of the Marvel Universe”.
Captain America, The Mighty Thor, Incredible Hulk, Invincible Iron Man, Fantastic Four, FF, Uncanny X-Men, New Mutants, and X-Men: Legacy will all be ending in October, according to Marvel’s Solicits.
Oh good, Fantastic Four is ending...again...
And yes, I know it will be rebooting/revamping/restarting/etc.
Sad to see Brubaker end his run on Cap, but then the past year or two weren't up to the standard he set earlier IMO. Kinda felt like he was mailing it in. And the art hasn't been the same since Epting left.
KamikazeCanuck wrote:@reds8n: I'm thinking of picking up the Nova TPBs. Does that lead into Guardians of the Galaxy? Where's a good starting point?
annihilation is a good starting point. after it ended the Nova run started and soon after there was another event called annihilation conquest. after conquest guardians of the galaxy joined nova as an ongoing cosmic title. they joined back up after a while for the war of kings and realm of kings events and then came the thanos imperative.
KamikazeCanuck wrote:@reds8n: I'm thinking of picking up the Nova TPBs. Does that lead into Guardians of the Galaxy? Where's a good starting point?
annihilation is a good starting point. after it ended the Nova run started and soon after there was another event called annihilation conquest. after conquest guardians of the galaxy joined nova as an ongoing cosmic title. they joined back up after a while for the war of kings and realm of kings events and then came the thanos imperative.
Ah. I've read Anihilation. I have Anihilation Conquest. I was going to read that then read Nova but I should read some (how much?) of Nova then Conquest, then GoG?
I think there were six or seven issues of nova before conquest started and then a few issues of nova that ran concurrently with conquest.
basically if you have the tpbs read nova vol 1 before conquest and then read vol2 after/with conquest. (if you have the limited nova hardcover just read the whole thing between annihilation and conquest.)
start the GotG trades after conquest.
wana10 wrote:I think there were six or seven issues of nova before conquest started and then a few issues of nova that ran concurrently with conquest.
basically if you have the tpbs read nova vol 1 before conquest and then read vol2 after/with conquest. (if you have the limited nova hardcover just read the whole thing between annihilation and conquest.)
start the GotG trades after conquest.
Spoiler:
Nova's reaction to civil war is wonderful
Cool, thanks. Figuring out the order of old comics is hard work...
No Nova? But he's got the bucket on his head and everything. I'm going to get Anihilators later because the cover has a raccoon with a raygun on the cover. That's insta-sold in my book.
Annihilators came after the thanos imperative. The team called Annihilators is formed during the event and they got an ongoing afterwards.
@Manchu I'd read at least the first two volumes of Nova. (annihilation and knowhere) it'll help set some of the background for what's to come in GotG and Thanos Imperative. Nova plays a large role in Thanos Imperative so you shouldn't ignore him. (plus he's awesome so you shouldn't skip him for that reason too!)
Have you not watched any of the films leading up to the Avengers.
